


Unshackled

by beckydawolf



Category: Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics), Marvel 616, Spider-Woman (Comic)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Female Friendship, Heist, Internalized Misogyny, Madripoor, Major Character Injury, Pheromones, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-03-20 11:06:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3648003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckydawolf/pseuds/beckydawolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carol's in space and Jess is alone again. But that's the pattern of her life.</p><p>The hunt for a missing teenager leads Jess to some new friends, reminds her she still has some old ones and forces her to face a part of her past she'd rather ignore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has been in my WIPs for a while now so lots of continuity handwaving is necessary.
> 
> Warnings for each chapter can be found in each one's end notes **but** please be aware that this fic is specifically about Jess's pheromones and all of the complications that come with that.

Jess is cold.

She's really, really cold. And Jess has been to Antarctica so when she says she's cold, she's not exaggerating.

Being cold sucks.

When she offered to look after Carol's place while she went off to explore the stars, there were a few factors Jess failed to consider. Firstly, Carol was going to be gone for most of the winter and, as a rule, New York doesn't usually warm up until _well_ in to the spring. In a normal apartment, this wouldn't be much of a problem but Carol doesn't live in a normal apartment. No, she lives in the Statue of freaking Liberty – inside a giant freaking copper crown with zero insulation. Which would be bearable if it weren't for the fact that Carol's an alien-human hybrid super-soldier who's able to move through the frigid vacuum of space with no ill effects, so she doesn't really need central heating.

Unfortunately, Jess is only a genetically engineered super-spy. So now she's cold. And grumpy. And she maybe misses her best friend.

She's trying not to think about that because, every time she does, she ends up wondering if Carol's missing her. Then, she remembers Carol lost her memories, so probably not. You can't miss what you don't know.

The only thing that stops Jess from just giving up and going to the Tower every night is Carol's bed. As beds go, it's pretty great, with it's huge, comfy mattress and soft cotton sheets. That it smells of Carol has nothing to do with anything; that would be weird.

Even tucked beneath the thick duvet in the middle of the day, Jess is still cold – stupid Carol and her stupid metabolism. Shivering slightly, she crawls out in to the biting air of Carol's bedroom. The chill nibbles at the exposed flesh of her hands and face. From the drawer she's claimed in Carol's dresser, she retrieves a pair of sweats and another pair of socks and pulls them on over her PJ bottoms. After a quick search through Carol's drawers, she finds a well-worn hooded sweatshirt, as faded as it is soft.

Layered up and a little warmer, Jess is about to return to bed when there's a knock at the door. After a quick mental check that she's not expecting any deliveries – no, she ordered takeout last night and she hasn't bought any clothes online in a while – she climbs down the winding metal stairs to answer.

On the other side of the door is a slender teenage girl wrapped in a dark leather jacket and a confused expression.

“You're not Captain Marvel,” Anya says.

Aside from the obvious question as to how she made it up to the door to the head of the Statue of Liberty, Jess is a little surprised anyone is here for Carol at all. When she left, Wendy – wonderful, dependable, ridiculously good at her job Wendy – took charge of most aspects of Carol's life, including dealing with all inquiries. Thanks to her, not a single person has come looking for Carol. Until now.

“Er, no,” says Jess. “She's not here.”

“Damn,” she huffs. “Wait, what are you doing here?”

“House sitting. Carol's... in space.”

“Seriously? That is so _cool_!”

“Pretty much, yeah. Will I do instead?”

“I dunno. I was looking for a superhero, not-” She gestures disparagingly to Jess's sweats and messy hair.

Jess rolls her eyes.

“Get in here, Spider-Mite.”

“It's Spider- _Girl_ ,” Anya corrects, full of fake indignation.

“It's Spider-Mite until you remember who your betters are.”

“'Better'? Really?”

“Get inside.”

Once she's settled on Carol's couch, Anya pulls a crumpled piece of paper from her jacket pocket. It's a missing persons poster, made on a home computer. Taking up nearly half the page is a photo of a teenage boy, in his soccer kit, grinning joyously.

“These have popped up all over my neighborhood,” Anya explains. “I've been looking for him but I've hit a dead end. I think I need a fresh pair of – not eyes because I don't have anything to show you, exactly – a fresh brain, maybe?”

“Alright, shoot,” says Jess, as she tucks her legs underneath her, getting comfortable. “Tell me what you already know.”

“His name's Kevin Perez. Fifteen, from Brooklyn. I don't know him but some of my friends know some of his friends. These posters turned up a week ago – I started looking the next day.”

“Who reported him missing?”

“His parents. They went to the police as soon as they realized he was gone. Problem is, he took some stuff with him – clothes, his toothbrush, that kinda thing. As ar as the police are concerned, he's a runaway.”

“You think different?”

Anya looks conflicted. “Honestly? I'm not sure. He's got lots of friends, gets on well with his parents, never been in any serious trouble. I can't see any reason why he'd leave. His parents definitely think something happened to him.”

“But?” prompts Jess.

“But there's no sign he didn't just up and go of his own free will. The only thing that makes me wonder is the timing.”

“Why? He disappear right after he flunked a test or something? Because that would make it sound more like he left, not less.”

“No. It was two days after the Mists came down.”

It could easily be coincidental but something in the back of Jess's mind – call it instinct, call it experience, call it spidey-sense – says there might be more to this.

“You got any leads?” asks Jess.

“Maybe one. When I talked to one of his friends – except, from the way she talked I think she might be his ex – she said he'd met a girl online.”

“How about her? Have you found her?”

“Yeah, I stalked her.”

“In the 'going through her social networks and researching her on the internet' way and not the 'harassing her on the internet' way, right? And definitely not the 'using her for hunting practice' way? Because those last two would be really wrong.”

“Yeah,” Anya says, looking at Jess like she's a bit of a weirdo. She misses (totally not thinking about Carol) being around someone who does that. “What you just said. But, as far as I can tell, she's a real person. If Kevin has run off, I'd bet that's where he's gone.”

“So where is this mystery girl?”

“Jersey City. Which means I better get to the station.”

From deep within her pajamas, Jess pulls out her phone.

“There are perks to being an Avenger,” she grins.

* * *

“This is so much better than taking the train,” Anya says, leaning over the side to look down at the ground passing rapidly beneath them.

“You fall out of this car and I'm gonna let you turn in to a pancake,” Jess retorts.

“See, you say that -”

“Pan. Cake.”

“- but I really don't think you would.”

“Don't tempt me,” Jess mutters, swerving unnecessarily hard to avoid a gaggle of geese flying in V-formation. Anya shrieks and clings to the door as the car banks sharply.

“Okay, okay, point made,” Anya glares at her.

Jess just grins back. “What's your plan?”

“Plan?”

“For when we get to Jersey.”

“Talk to Kevin's girlfriend.”

“How?”

“The normal way. By opening and closing my mouth while my vocal chords vibrate.”

Jess snorts.

“Alright, Master Yoda,” Anya says, “What do you suggest?”

“We don't have her address, right? Of course not, she's a teenager, with enough internet smarts not to post it. Same with her school. So we don't know exactly where to find her. How did you work out she lived in Jersey city?”

“From the tags on her photos – Oh! We find her by looking for where she tags from the most – that's probably where she hangs out, right?”

“Very good, young Skywalker,” Jess beams. “Very good.”

* * *

The photos lead them to a coffee shop with brightly colored wood paneling on the walls and huge chalkboards, detailing all the extravagant milkshake combinations and complicated coffees in bold, blocky lettering. At this time of the afternoon, the clientele has begun to shift from the stay at home moms with their pushchairs and diaper bags, chattering over their lattes, toward high-schoolers, eking out just a couple more hours with their friends before they can't avoid their homework any longer.

“That's her,” Anya says, gesturing subtly to a group of teenagers by the counter. “They must have just finished class for the day.”

Something occurs to Jess. “Wait, why aren't you in school? You're not skipping are you? Because – short of world ending events – that is a definite no-no.”

“ _Relax_ ,” she interrupts, sounding a little exasperated. “Teacher training day. _And_ I did all my homework last night.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“It's just- You've really got this figured out haven't you? Being a teen superhero, I mean. You're pretty good at it.”

“Thanks.” Anya smiles, half embarrassed, half really freaking proud. She nudges Jess playfully. “I've got good teachers.”

The group starts to move away from the counter.

“Time for some undercover work,” Jess tells her. This is why they've stayed in civvies. She digs around in her coat pocket for some cash and hands Anya a couple of bills. “Macchiato, extra shot, chocolate syrup and whatever you want.”

Then Jess takes off in the direction of the teenagers, grabbing an empty table next to theirs. There's six, maybe seven of them, boys and girls, all clumped around one small circular table. They haul over several of the candy-striped armchairs so they have enough seats, leaving a few of the surrounding tables looking lopsided.

While she waits for Anya, Jess casually eavesdrops on their conversation. It's mostly the usual teen fare - gossip about who's dating who, who's broken up with who, who isn't speaking to who, and complaints about teachers and assignments and parents and everything and anything.

By the time Anya returns with Jess's coffee in one hand and, in the other, something that could either be a coffee or a milkshake or a diabetic coma (or possibly all three), Jess is grateful of the interruption. Every so often, Jess has a day where she struggles to believe an objective person could consider her mature enough to be an adult. After any time spent around a group of teenagers, she quickly remembers that, nope, she is definitely an adult, thank you very much.

“Play along,” Jess murmurs, as Anya hands over her change. Then, she gets up from their table, and approaches the group.

“Hi,” she says brightly. “This is gonna sound slightly strange, and I promise I wasn't deliberately trying to eavesdrop, but did I hear right that you guys go to the local high school?”

“Er, yeah,” answers one of the boys warily. “We go to Woodrow Wilson.”

“That's great. This is my sister Anya – we've just moved to the area and, hopefully, she'll be starting there soo-”

“Ohmigod, _Jess_ ,” Anya jumps in, managing to both look and sound completely mortified. “What is wrong with you?” She turns to the group, who are failing to keep their amusement off their faces. “I am so sorry. She's worried I'm not going to make any friends but – Ugh! I can't believe this is happening to me!”

“It's okay,” one of the girls pipes up. “My dad did the exact same thing my first week freshman year. ”

“I'll just be over here, then,” Jess sing-songs, taking her coffee and pulling out her phone. Anya just rolls her eyes dramatically, making them laugh. And with that she's off, chatting away with them, but more importantly, getting to know them a little in the guise of learning about their school.

An hour or so later, when Jess has long since finished her coffee and is playing Candy Crush on her phone – she's been stuck on this one level since forever – Anya reappears by her side, waving the group of teens goodbye. Once they're out of sight, the friendly smile drops from her face.

“Well, that was a waste of time,” she sighs, flopping down in to the chair opposite Jess's. “I now know more than I ever wanted to about a group of people I will never see again and, to top it all off, Kevin hasn't been here. Other than Skype, they haven't even met yet. So we're back to where we started.”

Jess can sympathize, she really can. Anya obviously feels like she's put in all that effort and got nothing out of it.

“Are you kidding me?” Jess says. Anya looks up from where her head is resting on her arms, puzzled. “That was amazing. You were awesome.”

“I was?”

“My entire high school experience was learning how to do that. Without any manipulative powers – just by talking to them – you got them to give up the information we needed. You did that so much better than I could, just by being you.” She holds her hand up and Anya's palm meets hers in a reluctant high-five. “Besides, this wasn't a waste. You said it yourself, this is probably where he'd be if he'd run. Which means?”

“Which means he may not have left willingly – Oh, no.” The proud little smile that had settled itself on Anya's face falls straight off. “What next?”

“I'm not sure. Right now we don't have any other leads. I think the best thing we can do is head home and regroup. Maybe put out some feelers, look for similar cases, that sort of thing.”

As they get up to leave, Anya still looks despondent.

“Hey, I mean it,” Jess says. “You did good today.”

“Yeah?”

Jess nods and a little of Anya's smile returns.

“Jess?” Anya asks as they walk out off the coffee shop. “What made you think they'd buy that you're my sister? You're kind of pasty.”

“I wasn't sure they would. But I didn't think there was any chance of them believing I was your mom so I took a risk.”

“I dunno. We might have got away with you as my mom – you're certainly old enough.”

“Really? Another crack about my age?”

“Hey, if you keep setting them up, I'm gonna keep knocking them do- _Agghhh!_ ”

From every corner and every shadow of the narrow street they'd turned down, a dark figure materializes.

“ _Ninjas_ ,” Jess spits, like the word itself is a curse. As the first one lunges for her, she orders,“Anya, get up high.”

In her peripheral vision, Jess sees Anya do just that, taking only a handful of them with her – clearly they see her as the bigger threat.

 _Good_ , she thinks to herself.

She feints left, narrowly avoids a slice to her upper arm, then pivots, shocking the two jokers who were attempting to sneak up on her flank. With one deft movement, she drops to her hands, takes the legs out from under three more before springing high in to the air and landing on the shoulders of another. Wrapping her leg around his neck, she uses the momentum to slam him in to one of his compatriots, then spins away.

The ninjas are so focused on Jess, they fail to see the giant hand slamming towards them until they're flattened against the wall, accompanied by a war cry like an angry seagull, “Kee- _hah!_ ”

Shocked but grateful for the assistance, she scales the side of the building as quickly as she can to help Anya. She's doing well, holding her own against roughly half a dozen ninjas, but her youth and inexperience shows as she dodges one attack, only to take a blow to the gut, knocking her backwards.

Charging, Jess catches the ninjas unawares, flipping the closest two on to their backs, zaps the one on her right, kicks another in the face and spins, landing deftly on her feet. Anya's taken another couple down by herself. The remaining conscious ninjas, seeing the fate that has befallen their kin, slink away in to the shadows.

“You okay?” she asks Anya.

“Yeah- Ow! Maybe a little bruised,” she admits.

“We better get this cleared up,” Jess sighs. “Before anyone notices a whole bunch of unconscious ninjas on the streets of Jersey City and starts asking questions.”

“Do you need any more help?” a voice asks.

Jess turns around to see a girl, roughly the same age as Anya, floating in mid-air next to the building. No, wait, not floating,  _standing_ . The closer Jess gets to the edge of the roof, the more of the girl's legs she can see. Legs which go on and on and on until they reach the ground. For some reason, Jess's first thought is that she must have hell finding tights but the red leggings underneath her blue tunic – her tunic which has a very familiar looking yellow lightning bolt on it – seem to fit perfectly. She has thick dark hair, familiar with a hairbrush in the same way Jess is familiar with diet foods.

“Hi,” she chirps. “I mean,” sounding more serious, “Hello, I'm your friendly neighborhood Ms Marvel. Do you need anything else? Maybe help getting down off the roof? How did you get up here, anyway?”

Anya and Jess share a look and try really, really hard not to grin. It really is just her luck to not only have to fight ninjas in one of her favorite tops – and don't think she hasn't noticed the rip in the upper arm – but to then meet a new hero as herself and not as Spider-Woman.

“You're Ms Marvel?” Jess asks. “I could swear you've got shorter legs on TV. And can fly and stuff.”

“See, you're thinking of Captain Marvel,” Ms Marvel answers, puffing up her chest. “Who is amazing but I'm Ms Marvel. The new Ms Marvel.”

“Did you get permission to use her name?” Jess fixes her with a stern look.

Suddenly, underneath her domino mask, Ms Marvel looks unsure of herself.

“Oh my god, stop messing with her,” Anya bursts out laughing. “We'll meet you on the ground.”

The two of them grab the ninjas on the rooftop, sit them up so they're all touching and Anya webs them in place so that, even if they wake up, they won't be going anywhere. Then, under the curious gaze of Ms Marvel, they crawl headfirst down the building and repeat the process on the ninjas at the bottom.

“Who are you?” Ms Marvel asks awestruck, her legs shortening and bringing her down.

“I'm Spider-Girl,” explains Anya. “And this is Spider-Woman. We're not in costume because we were undercover.”

“ _Spider-Woman_?” she exclaims, eyes going wide. “You team up with Captain Marvel all the time! I'm using your friend's name. Oh, no, I'm– But it's not like she's using it anymore so I didn't think she'd min-”

“It's okay,” Jess interrupts. “I don't think she'd mind either. Was it you who took out the ninjas?” Ms Marvel nods. “She wouldn't mind at all. Thank you for the assist.”

For a moment, Ms Marvel's expression glazes over and it's not until a goofy smile plasters itself across her face that Jess realizes she might be a little starstruck.

“I love you costume, by the way,” Anya says, breaking her out of her reverie.

“You do?” Ms Marvel asks. “I needed something stretchy because, well, I'm kinda stretchy.”

“Seriously? That's so cool!”

“What about you? You can crawl up walls! And those webs!”

“Okay, okay,” Jess jumps in, before they can get any further. “How about we get out of here before the police come?”

“That sounds like-” Ms Marvel tips forward. “Woah.”

“You okay?” she asks, rushing to her side.

“Low blood sugar. I should really find some food. Growing like that kind of takes it out of me.”

“I could eat,” says Anya hopefully, looking at Jess. “We could, couldn't we, Spider-Woman? If Ms Marvel wants to join us, that is?”

“Seriously?” gushes Ms Marvel. “That would be the best! If that's okay with you, Spider-Woman?”

They both turn to look at her with big, dark, pleading eyes. Suddenly Jess has a flash of memory – the first time she met another woman  _like her_ . Another woman who _does this_ , who  _gets this_ . How happy she was that she wasn't the only one, that she might have a friend.

And how much it hurt when she fled from Jess in disgust.

It doesn't happen so much anymore – not since she refined her control and learned how to work around her powers – but she can't pretend she doesn't envy them.

“I can always eat,” she answers.

* * *

Ms Marvel takes them to a dinner a couple of blocks away. As they walk, she and Anya talk animatedly, Jess trailing a few steps behind.

“How do you know Spider-Woman?” Jess hears Ms Marvel ask.

“A while back, I helped out the Avengers,” Anya explains, clearly trying to impress her new friend. “She kind of took me under her wing, taught me some cool hero stuff. Spider-Woman is- She's awesome.”

Jess waits for the inevitable “for an old person” but it doesn't come.

As they reach the door of the diner, Ms Marvel stops in her tracks, looks down at herself, then looks at them.

“I can't go in like this,” she whispers, conflicted. “Not with you like that.”

“We could change,” Anya offers, “put on our costumes so you won't stand out.”

Ms Marvel shakes her head. “This isn't New York,”she says sadly. “People will get curious, ask questions. But if I take it off, you guys will know my secret identity.”

“Number one rule of superhero club – well, number two after don't kill anyone – is no outing people.”

“But- I'm not gay.”

“What Spider-Girl means,” Jess adds, “Is that, if you know another person's secret identity, you shouldn't tell it to anyone, even other superheroes, without their permission. No one should have to give up their real name if they don't want to.”

“So if I take off the costume so we can eat, you two would know who I am but that would be it?”

They nod. Ms Marvel seems to ponder this for a moment before taking off at a sprint and disappearing out of sight.

“You think she's coming back?” Jess asks.

“I hope so,” Anya says. “I wanted to get her number. My network of heroes doesn't really have anyone my own age in it. Not anymore.”

For a moment Anya looks sad, like an unwelcome memory just made itself known. Jess hopes it's not what she thinks, that Anya hasn't already lost a friend, not this young.

Suddenly, she sees a parka-clad shape tearing towards them, backpack slung over one shoulder. It abruptly stops in front of them, broad grin poking out from underneath a trapper hat along with familiar unruly hair and big eyes.

“Kamala,” she says, sticking her hand straight out in front of her.

“Very pleased to meet you, Kamala,” Anya replies, taking her hand and shaking it with mock formality. “I'm Anya.”

“Very pleased to meet you, Anya,” Kamala mimics.

“I'm Jessica,” she adds. “Hey.”

“Jess is the best,” Anya whispers to Kamala, conspiratorially. Then a little louder, “Especially because, if we ask really nicely, she might buy us food?”

“If by 'buy' you mean 'put it on my Avengers credit card so Tony Stark can foot the bill', then yes. Pretty sure feeding hungry teen heroes counts as an expense.”

“Tony- _Tony Stark_.” Kamala sounds like she's about to start hyperventilating. “I wrote a thing- A thing where he and- Oh _wow_ , I'm about to have food with an actual live Avenger, paid for by-”

Anya grabs her by the sleeve of her parka and drags her inside the diner, then plonks her down on the padded bench of a booth, climbing in next to her.

“Do you need to put your head between you legs?”she asks, lightly.

“Nope, I'm good. It's just, when I got up this morning, this is so not how I thought my day would go.”

“Those are the words that will be written on my gravestone,” says Jess, joining them in the booth, “And should probably be tattooed across my heart and every inch of spare flesh.”

The two girls give her a look across the table, before Anya turns to Kamala and says, “You know how I said Jess is awesome? She is but sometimes she is just downright weird.”

“I am sat right here, Spider-Mite.” She picks up a menu – color-coded with every food allergy and dietary requirement under the sun – and asks, “What are we getting? Mini-Marvel?”

“The cheeseburgers here are amazing,” Kamala says. “Really good cheese, not too much salad...”

“Cheeseburger sounds good,” chips in Anya.

“Three cheeseburgers it is.”

“Erm, Jessica?” Kamala asks a little shyly. “Can I get extra fries?”

“Doesn't it come with fries?”

“Yeah but- I kind of eat a lot.”

Girl after my own heart, Jess thinks.

“You can get as many as you want,” she grins.

* * *

When they come, the burgers are as good as promised and the three of them eat ravenously.

“So why were there ninjas after you?” Kamala asks around a mouthful of food.

“We... don't actually know,” admits Jess.

“Did we do something to provoke them?” Anya asks her.

“Honestly,” says Jess, gesturing with her knife, “When it comes to ninjas, who knows. Maybe they knew what we were doing here, maybe we accidentally trod on their toes. It's just as likely they saw us, thought we looked funny and decided to get rid of us.” She shrugs. “Like I said: ninjas.”

“Why are you here?” prompts Kamala. “Nobody seems to be trying to blow up Jersey City today.”

“A teenager went missing,” explains Anya. “We thought he might have come here to see his online girlfriend. He didn't but it was our best lead.”

“I've a few contacts in New York,” Jess reassures her. “We're not going to stop looking.”

_Bee-boop_ , comes a squeaky noise from beneath the table.

Kamala reaches down and retrieves her phone from inside her backpack, then lets out a snort around a mouthful of cheeseburger. Jess is a little impressed half-chewed food doesn't go flying right across the table. She shows the phone to Anya, who laughs.

“What?” says Jess, trying to sound cool and grown up and like she doesn't care what two teenage girls are laughing about - and probably missing by about a mile.

“Nothing,” Anya answers, grinning.

“Just this,” adds Kamala, handing her the phone.

On the screen is a selfie of a slender woman with a stylish pixie cut and big doe eyes. Sharing the picture with her is a green goddess, bending down in to shot on her left, and a dark haired beauty with soft dark eyes on her right. Jan, Jennifer and Wanda, the background recognizable to Jess as one of the mansion's plush sitting rooms. From the disembodied limbs poking in to shot they're not the only ones there.

Clearly, the silly faces they're pulling – Jan's pout, Jennifer's tongue sticking out and Wanda mockingly rolling her eyes – are what Anya and Kamala found so funny. What Jess sees is the label: #girlsnightin.

Something cold and unpleasant curls up in her belly that has nothing to do with the food. Suddenly, Jess wants to be both there and as far away from there as possible. She certainly doesn't want to be eating burgers with two kids half her age, not any more. Intellectually, she knows it probably wasn't planned, that it just happened because that's who was hanging around the mansion at the time. Not that that makes it any better. She hasn't been invited and that hurts for reasons she doesn't want to think about.

She pushes away the last of her fries.

“Come on,” she says. “I'd better get you two home before you're missed.”

Before they leave the diner, Anya and Kamala swap cell numbers, twitters, tumblrs and info for a few other sites Jess hasn't even heard of. To check she's input the number right, Kamala calls Anya's cell.

“ _I'm standing on my own_ ,” it sings. “ _But now I'm not alone. AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!_ ”

“That is so cool!” Kamala gushes.

Jess resists the childish temptation to point out it was her ringtone first.

At Kamala's request, they drop her down the block from her house, just far enough they won't be spotted by her parents. Jess takes a special kind of pleasure in seeing how her jaw drops as the car takes off from the ground. Ninety seconds later, Anya phone buzzes with a text.

“Kamala's mad we didn't tell her it was a flying car,” Anya says. It buzzes again. “And that we didn't take her flying in it.”

“Tell the Mini-Marvel, next time,” Jess says.

* * *

After she takes Anya back to Brooklyn, Jess returns the car to Avengers Tower. She could go up, see if any of the guys are up there and want to hang out but it feels a bit desperate. Going to the Mansion is an option, joining the other women, but a nasty, unpleasant little voice somewhere in the back of her mind points out that if she's wanted then why hasn't anyone invited her. That same voice then provides an image: a room full of women, all smiling, having a great time, then Jess walks in. Those smiles freeze, almost painted in place, and someone says, “Oh, Jess, we didn't know you were coming.” It's happened again, she's made everyone _uncomfortable_ and – No, she's not going over there, not tonight, not feeling like this. On the other hand, going back to Carol's place, cold and lonely, doesn't appeal either.

So she does the next best thing she can think of: she goes to a bar.

As plans go, it's pretty terrible, she knows that even as she does it. The bar she picks is just a little too grungy to be hipster, with sticky floors and non-ironically chipped tabletops. No part of it escapes the sickly sent collage of a thousand accumulated spilled drinks. The music's just too loud to talk over, the lighting just too low; the perfect place to be alone in public.

Jess and alcohol have a funny relationship. She's used to not drinking when she's with Carol, knows how to have fun without it. Her biology makes it difficult to get drunk. Alcohol – like chocolate – is a poison but enjoyable in small doses. Unfortunately, her body failed to get the 'small doses' part of the message and treats it like it would any toxin. Which means, if she wants to get any of the kick, it's necessary to overwhelm her system. And sometimes, a girl just wants to get wasted.

Beer is off the cards – too much extra liquid, too much gas, not enough toxin. Same, more or less, goes for wine. Spirits should do the job if she drinks enough and drinks it quickly enough. Which is why, when the bartender takes her order, she asks for a glass and to just leave her the cheap bottle of bourbon.

She's all but finished the the first bottle – she stopped noticing the burn somewhere around the fifth glass – and is eying up a second when a man slides in to the seat next to hers. After a quick check to make sure her control of her pheromones hasn't slipped, although at this point she doesn't really care (that's a lie, she always cares), she twists in her seat towards him.

There's nothing especially memorable about him. He's moderately attractive, has nice arms and doesn't creep her out or set off any alarm bells. Most importantly, he's not flirting with her because she's deliberately or accidentally manipulated him in to. He seems to be doing it because he genuinely finds her attractive. Or at least, she thinks cynically, because he thinks she's his best shot here at getting some tonight.

Either way, it's a nice feeling, to be wanted, something she's missed. That and the alcohol making her loose are probably why, when he suggests they 'get out of here', she goes with him. They go to his apartment, which is about as memorable as he is. Jess wouldn't take a one night stand to the Tower and the idea of taking him to Carol's feels so wrong it turns her stomach.

The foreplay is perfunctory at best, something he seems to do only because he knows he should rather than because he garners any pleasure from it. After he finishes his fumbling, Jess is nowhere near excited. If she's honest, she's mostly attracted to the fact he's into her than anything else about him but she stays with it in the hope that that will be enough, that it will improve.

It doesn't. Unenjoyable and not slick enough, the longer it goes on, the more Jess wishes for it to just hurry up and end already. When he puts his hand on the back of her head and pushes down in an unspoken instruction, she goes, thankful for a way to end this quicker. She uses one hand to stop him pushing too far forward, choking her.

He comes and she swallows it reflexively, regretting it immediately.

As she heads home (to Carol's, she chides herself, she shouldn't think of it as home), she tries not to think about why, after that, she feels no joy, not even a sense of achievement, just an empty hollow where something good should be.

And, wouldn't you know it, she's alone again.

* * *

The next day, no matter what she eats or how much she cleans her teeth, Jess can still taste salt in the back of her throat. It makes her sick.

* * *

When she returns from taking out the trash – because, who'd have thought it, the freaking Statue of Liberty has no garbage disposal – Natasha Romanov is sat in her kitchen.

“I found your ninjas,” she says.

“How do you know about the ninjas?” Jess put feelers out to a few people she knows in less than legitimate occupations around the city but Natasha wasn't one of them. “And how did you get in, anyway?”

“Haven't you heard? I know everything,” Natasha answers, completely ignoring the second question and not doing a great job of answering the first. “They were watching the same young lady you spoke with. You must have made them suspicious.”

“Which means even if he wasn't there, they had the same idea we did. But why are ninjas looking for a fifteen year old boy from Brooklyn?”

“You look awful,” Natasha says. “Take a shower.”

“Thank you _so_ much. How does that help with my ninja problem?”

“It doesn't. But you still smell like aftershave, sweat and alcohol.”

“Better that than perfume, sweat and motor-oil.”

“That's Tony's one-night stand smell, not yours. Now go shower.”

Natasha's still waiting for her when she returns from the shower. She does feel better, fresher, less like the pitiful woman she was last night. There's even a pot of one of Carol's teas (she has a  _lot_ of teas) steaming away on the counter, turning the air fragrant. Natasha watches her over the rim of her own cup.

“The ninjas are from Madripoor,” Natasha informs her coolly. Jess all but drops her tea, thankful she finished pouring it before Natasha told her that.

“Do you know who they work for?” she asks, already afraid she knows the answer.

Natasha just meets her eyes then, with a barely perceptible nod, confirms Jess's fears.

“Fuck,” Jess breathes.

“Imagine how much worse that would have felt before you showered,” murmurs Natasha.

“You're all heart, you know that?”

“So I have been told.”

“Are you sure? How do you know?”

“I have my sources,” she says, unhelpful as ever.

“Do your sources know anything else? Like what they want with him?”

“They don't. Although they do recommend stopping by the Princess Bar in Lowtown.”

Jess sighs. “That was going to be my first stop anyway. Usually a good place to pick up on the island's current mindset.”

“Gossip,” Natasha smiles, “No matter where you are in the world, it's a universal currency that never depreciates.”

“And like any money, there's usually somebody fighting someone else because of it.” She sighs again. “Fucking Madripoor.”

* * *

Before Jess leaves to catch a her flight to Madripoor, she phones Anya. She's flying commercial to Hong Kong then catching a connecting flight to Madripoor; taking a quinjet is only an option if she wants the whole island to know and completely lose any element of surprise.

“A source came through for me,” Jess tells her. She doesn't mention it's Natasha. Or that she broke in and made her hungover ass tea. She'd like maintain some air of competency.

“So, where next?” asks Anya.

“You're not coming.” On the other end of the phone, Anya starts to protest. “No, I'm sorry. This isn't negotiable.”

Taking a teenager for a day trip to Jersey is one thing but taking a minor out of the country is a whole different matter. And if this goes wrong, she doesn't want Anya anywhere near it.

“I know you want to help,” Jess says. “This... would be so much more fun with you here. But you can't this time, okay? New Avengers lesson for the day: sometimes you have to let someone else take over your investigation. Not because you can't but because they're in a better position to run with it.”

“Okay, I guess,” Anya grudgingly agrees. “Where did your source send you?”

“Madripoor. It's an island off the coast of China.”

She must pick up on something in Jess's voice because the next thing Anya asks is, “It's going to be dangerous, isn't it?”

“Yeah, Spider-Mite, I think it is.”

She doesn't mention it might be personal too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning for** bad drunk sex.


	2. Chapter 2

The Princess Bar in Madripoor's impoverished Lowtown is like something out of an old Hollywood movie. While Madripoor, unlike many of its neighbors, was never a colony, it didn't entirely escape colonial influences. With its ceiling fans and dark wood furniture, the Princess Bar looks a lot like a social club from the kinds of movies where the hero would travel to a far-flung exotic location, then drink gin and tonics there surrounded by his civilized countrymen, only ever really encountering the natives when they brought him a refill. The clientele, however, are a somewhat different matter.

If it were located in Hightown, Jess doubt its patrons – even today – would be much different from their film counterparts; well off expats looking for a little something of home on the other side of the world. By Lowtown standards, it's downright classy. Too expensive for the poorest of Lowtown's residents, it manages to attract both the criminal elite of Lowtown and the elite criminals of Hightown, in one of the few places on the island where the two peoples mix.

After dark, Jess knows, a tourist in the Princess Bar is like a fly in the honey pot. She's going to stand out but she's counting on that. What she isn't counting on is the two extra flies in the corner.

One of them could be Jess's clone; same china-white skin and dark hair, although hers is probably natural. The girl with her is downright beautiful. Her hair, black like a moonlit bay, curls melodically – something Jess has seen a lot of women spend a lot of money to imitate – immediately drawing the eye. Draped across the fuck-with-me-if-you-dare set of her shoulders is a paper-thin white top that shows off every one of her impressive upper-body muscles before flowing languidly across her undoubtedly equally toned stomach. On the shirt, the design so deliberately faded it's barely more than a whispered suggestion of an image, is printed the US flag.

“There's a joke in here somewhere,” says Jess, approaching their table, “Along the lines of 'what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this' but if you're here, Kate Bishop, I'm guessing the answer's already 'trouble'.”

“Jessica,” Kate replies curtly.

Her companion says nothing, simply leans back and crosses her legs, one booted foot resting on her knee, and studies Jess, a smirk playing at her lips.

“Would you believe me if I said we're backpacking?” says Kate.

“Backpackers don't come to the Princess Bar,” Jess points out.

“And of all the gin joints, in all the world, you walk in to this one.”

“While I enjoy a mangled Casablanca quote as much as the next woman, that doesn't tell me anything. People like us come to Madripoor for one reason, Kate, and it isn't for a vacation. If you tell me why you're here, we can avoid stepping on each others toes. ”

“We're tracking... an artifact?” Her companion nods. “An artifact. Probably dangerous, definitely unpleasant on a grand scale if it falls in to the wrong hands.”

“And it's not like Madripoor hasn't got plenty of those.”

“Exactly. We think the sale is going down in the next few days but we haven't got a when, a where or a who yet.”

“Then how do you even know it's here?”

Kate glances at the young woman next to her. “We know. It's here somewhere.”

“I can feel it,” the other girl murmurs.

“Do you know what it is?” Jess asks.

“No clue,” Kate replies. “All we really know is it's extra-dimensional and very bad. So, c'mon, what brings you to this retched hive of scum and villainy?”

“Teenage boy went missing in New York. Started looking in to it and got attacked by ninjas – ninjas dispatched from Madripoor.”

“What do ninjas want with a teen thousands of miles away?”

“Exactly what I'm here to find out.” Jess leaves off the part about their employer.

“Well, if we run across any lost American teens, we'll let you know.”

“Good luck hunting your... very bad thing.”

As she walks away, Jess sees the other young woman gently drop one arm across Kate's shoulders, then lean in and murmur something in her ear. She could be wrong but Jess would swear Kate shudders a little.

With a little palm greasing (alright, a lot of palm greasing), she gets a talking to a dockworker – who has a lucrative sideline in skimming off just enough from imports that it looks like an accounting error and selling them on the black market – about unusual shipments on and off the island.

“Two, three times a week they come in,” he tells her. “The containers don't go with the rest and they have a special crew to unload them.”

“Do you know what they're bringing in?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “Maybe drugs, maybe money but normally that stuff comes in the usual channels. You bribe the right official, nobody cares.”

“Where do the containers go?”

“Dockyards work all night, right, that's normal. But nobody I know has ever seen one of those get loaded on to anything, not a truck, not anything. They don't even get opened. They just sit there, all day, all night, untouched, until they get loaded back on to the ship they came in on.”

“When's the next one due to arrive?”

“Tomorrow morning, I think. You make it worth my while, I'll get you in to the dock so you can take a better look.”

It's not much to go on but, if it's strange enough to be worthy of comment on Madripoor, it might be worth investigating.

* * *

After parting with another few hundred dollars, Jess's new friend gets her close enough to the latest container to take a decent look. He makes it very clear, she's on her own from there and, if anything goes wrong, they never met.

At first glance, the container looks like every other shipping container in the world. A long, squat metal box with corrugated sides, its royal blue paintwork faded, grubby and peppered with surface rust. It's indistinguishable from the thousands like it in the dockyard. She tries opening it but the lock won't budge; times like these she wishes she had Carol's superstrength. Or just Carol. She zaps it with as much power as she's able and, with a satisfying creak, the lock buckles.

Inside, the container is dark and empty. No conveniently left packing, no handily forgotten manifests, nothing. The sides are bare too, no help there, just smooth, unpainted metal. Jess even goes so far as to climb on the ceiling for a closer look, just in case. Again, nothing.

She drops down on to the floor and, as she goes to leave, her boot catches on something on the ground. There, running lengthways across the container's bottom, is a barely perceptible seam, only wide enough to fit maybe a fingernail between. Thinking there must be some way to open it, Jess starts examining the construction of the container. Masquerading as a door hinge, the release mechanism thunks and the floor swings open, forming a ramp down to a tunnel below. A crude, but no doubt effective, way of smuggling things on and off the island unseen.

Now she's come this far, only a small army – or possibly chocolate cake – could stop her going in to that tunnel. The air changes even as she walks down the ramp, going from Madripoor's usual humidity, cut with the industrial diesel fumes of the dockyard, to cloying and damp, the smell of dirt catching in the back of Jess's throat. Whoever built the tunnel used big wooden beams to keep the sandy soil from collapsing in on them. The tunnel continues down until the light from the surface is just a pinprick and Jess is grateful for her enhanced eyesight in the darkness. Down here, she can hear a rumbling so deep it vibrates through her body; it must go near the subway line. After another fifty yards and the tunnel starts the rise again.

She emerges in to the kind of industrial building Jess has seen the world over. Its walls are brick built to about waist height then continue in corrugated metal, with the same gray metal sheeting forming a roof. Frustratingly, with the exception of the tunnel entrance, it's as bare as the container was.

Something about the big empty space makes Jess uncomfortable in a way she can't define, like something seen from the corner of her eye that isn't actually there. But all over her body, clogging every sense. Jess shakes her head, trying to shift the feeling, without any luck. She turns around and...

Kevin Perez stands there, hands in pockets and kit bag dangling from one shoulder. Jess hadn't heard him come in but, for some reason, the strange sensation subsides.

“You're... who I'm meeting?” He sounds unsure, confidence evaporating as he takes in her costume.

“I might be,” Jess answers slowly. “Or I might be the woman who's traveled halfway round the world looking for you. You called your parents recently, Kevin?”

He looks terrified, clearly not expecting anyone to know his name.

From somewhere near the door comes the familiar thump of a boot connecting with metal. Kevin jumps at the sound and then starts to... to _fade_. Suddenly, the weird feeling washes back over Jess.

“Hey!” a voice shouts. Then, Kate's companion from the bar stamps her way over to Kevin, just as he vanishes. This time, she's wearing dark shorts and a white henley with red, white and blue suspenders – Jess is beginning to spot a theme here. Her eyes glow incandescently, then a five-pointed star, as bright as her eyes, appears exactly where Kevin was. With one forceful kick, it shatters, a portal opening in its place. Then, she thrusts one arm through and drags Kevin back by his t-shirt collar, feet dangling a couple of inches off the ground.

“Do that again and I'll come get you again,” she growls. Then, she spits something in Spanish that Jess is pretty sure is insulting. He goes bright red and starts struggling against her grip. She shakes him vigorously. “Stop it.”

“Put him down,” Kate says. She has her bow trained on him, the muscles of her bare arm bunching. “He's not going anywhere.”

“Your funeral, princess,” she friend replies, dropping him on to the concrete.

“Hawkeye,” Jess greets her.

“Spider-Woman,” replies Kate, without taking her eyes off Kevin.

“I'm sorry,” he whimpers. “I'm sorry, I- I didn't mean to-”

“Hey, look,” Kate says. “We found your missing teen.”

“I'm gonna take a wild stab in the dark,” Jess says, “and say I found your artifact?”

Kate's friend rips the bag from Kevin's shoulder. He's obviously trying to rally, to not show how overwhelmed he is by everything that's happening. Jess can't really blame him; he's just a kid, clearly he's developed some kind of powers, he's thousands of miles from home, and three strangely dressed women have just turned up and threatened him. It probably says something about his character that he hasn't shut down completely.

“Oh yeah,” says Kate's friend, unzipping the bag. “It's the...”

She trails off, eyes glassy as she stares its contents.

“What is it?” Kate asks.

She doesn't answer, just continues to stare in to the bag.

“America?” Kate sounds concerned. She lowers her bow, returning the arrow to her quiver, and goes over to her friend.

She doesn't so much as look up.

“Babe?” she says. “C'mon, snap out of it.”

Nothing. Looking somewhere between terrified and angry, Kate grabs the bag from America's hands and throws it across the room. Whatever mesmeric hold it had on her disappears and, dazed, America tips forward. Kate catches her with one arm.

“I got you,” Kate murmurs into her ear. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” America answers, Kate's fingers buried in her hair, cupping her head. “Just. Just weird.”

It's intimate, too intimate, and Jess turns away from them with a pang of longing deep in her gut. She refuses to think about who she might be longing for.

“What is that thing?” she asks Kevin, gesturing to where the bag landed in an dusty heap.

“I don't- I don't know,” he stammers. “I don't even know what to call it. It found me.”

“Found you?”

He nods. “It wanted me to take it with me. That sounds crazy, doesn't it?”

“Not crazy,” says America joining them, Kate close behind. “It gets in your head. Makes you want to do what it asks. You know what it is?”

Kevin shakes his head.

“Where did you get it?” Kate asks, voice flinty.

“One of my... disappearances. It was just there. Waiting for me to take it.”

“You found The It in another dimension and brought it _here_? And you thought that was a good idea?”

Jess steps between them.

“Why did you bring – Is that what we're calling it, The It? - Why did you bring The It here?” she asks Kevin. “To Madripoor, I mean.”

He shrugs. “Got an email offering me a lot of money if I brought it here. The It liked it, so I went. I'm meant to meet someone, to give it to them. Thought it was you when you showed up but you're obviously not them.”

The large steel door at the other end of the room slides closed with a heavy thud.

“I believe you have something for me, young man.” The slightly nasal voice belongs to a small, suited man, his face flushed from the heat. He walks toward them like a duck across a riverbank, weight awkwardly shifting from foot to foot.

“Do you have it?” he asks Kevin, ignoring the three of them entirely.

With a quick glance at the bag, Kevin nods sheepishly.

“Hang on a sec,” interrupts Jess. She places one hand on Kevin's shoulder to keep him from retrieving the bag. “Something isn't right here. Who are you?”

“Are you in possession of the item?” the man asks.

“No-”

“Then I have no business with you. Out of my way, please.”

She's tried asking nicely. It would be nice if, once in a while, that actually worked. She could beat the information out of him but that takes time and isn't nearly as effective as people seem to assume. Also, Avengers aren't supposed to go in for that sort of thing – there's that too.

Jess takes a deep breath, uses it to center herself and reaches deep inside. Then, she just lets go. It's both painful and a relief, like relaxing a muscle after it's been in the same position too long, as she gives up her control and lets the pheromones wash out of her.

While she directs most of them at the man in the suit, some of them diffuse outwards in to the surrounding space. The effect on the other people in the room is almost instantaneous. Kate has an expression like something extremely unpleasant has just crawled under her nose. America plants her feet firmly apart, balls her fists, teeth clenched as she searches for the threat. Kevin's flushed, pupils dilated and – Wow, okay, Jess did _not_ need to see that. She makes a mental note to never use her powers around teenage boys and their libidos in future.

The man in the suit is all but drooling, jaw slack, as he stares at Jess. She long ago gave up the hope that any of the men under her influence would look at her like she was something they desired, like she's something precious. Instead they eye her like a starving man would a piece of meat: a way to sate their hunger. It's in the space between creating that need in them and providing them with what they want that Jess has power over them.

“Hello,” he pants at her.

“Hi,” she replies, voice dangerously saccharine. “Now why don't you tell me what you're doing here?”

“My law firm sent me,” he babbles. “Our client hired us to help reclaim something that belongs to them. Your hair is beautiful.”

“Yes, I know it is. The thing you were sent to get, what is it?”

“I don't know, they didn't tell me. Only that it would be waiting for me here with the boy and to be careful handling it.” He reaches out for her hair but Jess steps just out of range. “I want to touch it.”

“Tell me what I want to know and I might let you. Who's the client?” Jess really wants to be wrong about who's after Kevin.

“One of the criminal gangs on the island. I don't know which one, I really don't. Most keep a whole bunch of lawyers on retainer. Really, it could be any of our clients.”

He's been creeping closer to her, until he's close enough to reach out and touch her, one hand on her ass, the other in her hair. Jess shoves him off with enough force to knock him to the ground.

“That's it baby, be rough with me,” he moans.

Right about now, Jess wishes she'd just beaten the information out of him in the first place.

With a force of will hard earned, Jess curls her self-control around her pheromones and shuts them away. As the last of them dissipate, everyone returns to their normal selves. Lying on the ground, the man in the suit looks confused as he adjusts his pants and climbs unsteadily to his feet.

“What... just happened?” asks Kate, wrapping her arms around herself.

“I did,” answers Jess.

“Well, you give me the creeps,” America states.

“Heard that one before. Kevin, you okay?”

“Yeah,” he mutters, sounding embarrassed and holding his hands in front of his crotch. “Everything's great.”

“What did you do to me?” squawks the man in the suit.

“Nothing permanent,” Jess informs him. “More's the pity. Just a little boost of pheromones so you'd tell me what I wanted to know.”

“So- So you attacked me?”

“I guess. A little bit.”

“She attacked me!” He tips his head forward and speaks directly to his chest. “I repeat, she attacked me!”

It's only as the canister of gas comes soaring through a window, its noxious contents trailing behind it like a jet stream, that Jess realizes what's happened: he's wearing a wire. The gas floods the room, making her eyes water and her throat sting. She hears the unmistakable sound of bodies falling to the floor – three of them – as the gas overcomes them. Jess remains standing – thank you freaky, toxin resistant biology – but through the fog comes bodies, lots of bodies, clad head to toe in black and equipped with gas masks.

More _fucking_ ninjas.

Jess widens her stance and brings her arms up in front of her, ready for the attack. She zaps the first two who come at her, pivots, kicks one in the chest, uses the momentum to tip her back on to her hands, wraps her calf around another's neck and smacks him to the ground. Staying low to the ground, she finds her feet again, lashes out at a nearby leg, which gives with a satisfying crack. She dodges a blow aimed at her head but takes one to the shoulder instead, numbing her right arm. Viciously, she lands her other fist in the gut of the closest ninja but, next thing she knows there's an arm around her waist, another pinning her arm. She stamps down, aiming for her captor's instep, but he knows enough to stay out of range.

Something – it feels like it's made of a heavy cotton – is slipped over her face, covering her mouth and nose. She hears a little sigh like an asthma inhaler deploying. The lower half of her face becomes moist. Clearly amateurs if they think whatever that is will do anything other than slow her down a little- 

Oh, fuck, it _hurts._ Jess's mouth and nose burn. She gasps for a clean breath but that only makes it worse. Her throat, it's in her throat. She wants to scream but the pain is in her chest now, in her lungs, and she can't get enough air to whimper, let alone scream. She struggles in vain against the hands holding her but the edges of her vision are going. They've taken the thing away from her mouth. She's taking fast, panicky breaths. They don't help. She tries to get enough air to- enough to-

Everything goes black.

* * *

Jess comes to slowly. While her head feels like it's stuffed with cotton wool, clogging up all of her senses, the rest of her could be in another galaxy for all she knows. Then the familiar tingling of sensation returning – and it says a lot about her life that Jess has been knocked unconscious enough times for this process to be classed as 'familiar' – dully reconnecting her with important parts of her body. She doesn't know where she is, how long she was out and what happened to her in the intervening time.

As her extremities come back on line, Jess runs through a quick check of the important things. As far as she can tell she's still wearing underwear – which is good – and it doesn't feel like her costume's been interfered with – also good. No pain between her legs either; she's three for three there.

Most of the pain is coming from her chest, which is horribly tight, her breathing shallow. There's something over her mouth, maybe a mask. Is that what's stopping her breathing? She starts to struggle desperate to get the thing off, to breathe properly, but she can't reach her face.

The hand holding hers – someone's holding her hand? – squeezes, talon-like nails scratching against her skin, then a voice says firmly,

“Stop it, Jessica. You'll hurt yourself.”

She knows that voice, she's sure of it but she can't quite- Everything is muggy, her brain sluggish, like an elderly librarian searching through index cards for the right thought. She opens her eyes, then immediately regrets it, slamming them shut against the overwhelmingly bright light. This isn't where she was knocked out, though, she knows that. The air is different here, warmer and drier than the warehouse, the smell sterile, not the concrete and metal of industrial buildings – but, with the mask on, she doesn't trust her sense of smell right now. Underneath her is a mattress and clean sheets. She tries to move again but her arms still won't do what she wants. She tries again, tugs them harder, and when it hurts, Jess realizes she's been restrained. From the grating sound of metal sliding against metal, she'd guess she's handcuffed to the bed rails. Friends tend not to handcuff you, meaning these people, whoever they are, should be treated as foes.

Foes. Oh, fuck. She knows who the voice belongs to.

Right now she has maybe two options and neither of them are great. The first would be to slip her cuffs, possibly by breaking some of the less essential bones in her hands, and fight her way out against an unknown number of enemies while being hampered by injured hands. The second is to lie back and wait to be rescued by someone. Unfortunately, given that she doesn't know what happened to the others, it's unlikely anyone knows she's here so that could take a while.

Her biggest problem, though, is the pain in her chest and the scentless, tasteless gas that's being pumped to her. It could easily be causing the pain but, given who her captor is, it could also be keeping her alive. Either way, she's in no fit state to put up much of a fight.

“Where am I?” she rasps and, fuck, her voice hurts. Whatever is wrong seems to be affecting not just her lungs but her whole respiratory system.

“You're safe, darling.” The little endearment turns her stomach. “It took us _forever_ to find a way to subdue you. Thankfully, we still had some notes in our files on your... delectable physiology. That gave us invaluable help.”

“What are-” Jess has to stop halfway and gasp for air, her throat raw. “What are you doing to me?”

“Right now, nothing. That's O2 you're breathing. We wouldn't want you to die after all our hard work, now would we?” There's a _thlick_ _thlick_ of spike heels against laminate flooring, rounding her bed. “Nothing we came up with – be it poison, radiation, anything, in any form – was going to work. We just did too good a job with you the first time out. So we gave up on subtly, gave up on the chemicals and tried something else. What you're feeling now is the result of nanoparticles forced straight in to you lungs, shredding your airways and alveoli. Voila, instant oxygen deprivation.”

“So you've got me,” Jess snarls – or tries to, she can't get enough breath behind it. “Now what?”

“You're home now, sweetheart, that's all that matters.”

She wants to scream at her that this is not her home. Her home is where she decides, not here, not cuffed to a bed. Her home, right now, is with Carol and the Avengers. Carol – who is gone – and the Avengers – who don't even know she's missing – some home.

“The people I was with,” Jess gasps. “Where are they?”

“We have them,” she says, thumb gently stroking Jess's wrist. “Although someone should really tell that little archer that purple is a ghastly color.”

“If you hurt them-”

“Now why would I do that? If you decide to do something silly, though, then anything that _might_ happen to them would be all your fault.” There is a tiny clicking noise, then Jess's face is moist again, her throat raw. “Sleep now, Jessica. Momma's got you.”

* * *

The first thing Jess notices when she wakes up is that she's alone. For probably the first time in her life, she's actually glad of that. She's still cuffed to the bed but she feels more aware than when she last woke.

Opening her eyes, the harsh light has gone, replaced with dim nighttime lighting. The window, large and made of thick glass, displays a panoramic view of Madripoor. It's a clear night, with stars twinkling above and the lights in the bay twinkling far below. From the angle, she'd guess she's in one of Hightown's skyscrapers.

The room is a lot nicer than she was expecting. The fact she even has a window is a sign that either her captor owns the place or is paying a pretty penny to keep her here. Neither option works in her favor. The fittings are comfortable, sterile and elegant, without a single thing out of place. In fact, if Jess had to put money on it, she'd say someone has been in and stripped out everything that wasn't absolutely necessary. The rest – anything that she could potentially use to escape – has been placed far out of her reach.

Clipped to the bed rail, close enough for her restrained hand to reach it, is a button. It's not wired – they're smart enough not to give her something she could use to strangle, electrocute or otherwise maim her enemies – but when she presses it, it gives out a content little hum. Two minutes later, a nurse in patterned scrubs comes through her door.

“Bathroom?” she rasps out.

He nods and leaves the room, only to return a few moments later with a set of keys, a wheelchair and a security guard twice her size. Jess has taken bigger but not in her current state. _You could take him_ , her pride points out and, while it's true, she needs to save her strength.

She eyes the wheelchair with disdain but, after the attempt to climb in to it leaves her breathless, she's grateful it's there, along with the oxygen tank strapped to it.

The bathroom has been as carefully emptied as her room. Even the emergency pull cord has been tied up just out of reach. Jess would be flattered they see her as such a threat if the short trip hadn't left her feeling so exhausted.

Despite that, it does fulfill her intended purpose: getting her a closer look at the world beyond her room. She can see a nurses station and, beyond that, a reception desk. Both are brightly lit and everything appears to be made of either glass or expensive looking wood. It's not just clean but completely unblemished in a way that screams money. Aside from the guard, though, the security looks minimal at best.

So an expensive clinic but probably ill-equipped to deal with someone like her. Which makes her wonder why they put her here. It doesn't make sense to watch her like a hawk but have no measures in place to stop her if she does slip her bindings.

The short trip to and from the bathroom has sapped whatever was left of her energy and, even with the handcuffs firmly back in place, the bed begins to look inviting. A quick nap and then she'll come up with a plan.

* * *

It's morning when she wakes again. She's wasted more time, she knows, but Jess does feel better for the sleep. Although her chest still screams at her every time she takes a breath, at least her nose no longer feels like someone shoved a bottle brush up it. She hoists herself up as far as her restraints will allow, ignoring the pain, then hits the call buzzer.

It's a different nurse this time, a woman, which is going to work in her favor. She fixes her with her warmest, least threatening smile. The nurse eyes her cautiously.

“Hi,” Jess says. “Do you think you could you help me with my hair? I'd do it myself but...” She gestures helplessly.

“Your hair?” the nurse asks, wary.

“Please. I'm not going anywhere, I can barely breathe on my own. But my hair's a mess and I just-” she starts to tear up. “Oh god, I don't know. It's stupid but my hair, if it doesn't feel right then I don't. You know what, never mind. I'm sorry-”

“No, no,” the nurse interrupts, just as Jess starts crying. “I'm the same. Hey, it's okay. We'll fix it nice, just let me find a hairbrush, alright?”

Jess nods, snuffling appropriately through her tears. The nurse smiles kindly at her before she leaves. Oh man, Jess feels like such a tool for what she's got planned.

When the nurse returns, she's got a brand new brush and a box of tissues. She even goes as far as to carefully take the oxygen mask off then wipe Jess's face and help her blow her nose.

Yeah, Jess is definitely a terrible person.

As the nurse leans over the bed rail, her stomach brushes against Jess's hand. That contact is all she needs. Jess sends a small jolt in to her – just enough to knock the woman out without draining Jess – and the nurse slumps forward on to the bed.

In the nurse's hair, holding her bangs back, are a couple of bobby pins. A couple of bobby pins that are now within Jess's grasp. Straightened out, she now has a pair of lock picks. It's been a while since she's needed to do this, and it's even harder one handed, but within five minutes she has the first cuff off and is on to the second.

She climbs out from under the nurse then strips her of her scrubs. Slipping them on, she finds an electronic pass key in the pocket. Perfect. Her costume shows below the sleeves, so it won't stand up to much scrutiny, but it should be enough to get her out the front door.

From experience, she knows the trick is to walk with purpose, like she has somewhere to be and something to do. To keep her gaze level but to avoid meeting anyone's eyes directly. Fine in principal, harder to do when breathing is a chore and she's struggling to keeping her legs underneath her.

By the time she makes it past the nurses' station, she's already feeling the strain but she keeps going, lifting one foot after the other, resisting the desire to drag her feet. The wooziness sets in round about the reception desk. She fights it, fights it across the last few yards to the glass double doors. Holding on to them to keep her up, she pulls the key-card from her pocket, raises it to the reader and-

Nothing happens. The little light stays red, the doors stay closed.

She tries again, lifts it up even as her vision starts to swim. It doesn't work. _Why isn't it working?_ All she had to do was make it out the front door. _Can't even do that right._

Large hands close around her biceps, lifting her off her feet. She fights back, lashing out – why does this keep happening to her? – but it took too much out of her to make it this far and it's a wasted effort. The security guards carry her back to her bed and have her cuffed in place before she even has a chance to form an alternate escape plan.

Then she's alone again, in her bare room, back on the bed, stripped of the scrubs, cuffs biting at her wrists. The only upside is that she's back on the oxygen and, wow, that does feel good. Her head clears with each breath, awareness returning.

She was so desperate to get out, she failed to properly think through why there's so little obvious security; they don't need it, they're already locked in. It's the kind of rookie mistake she'd counsel Anya against and she can't believe she fell for it.

There's a click of heels followed by the shuffling of plastic clogs. Not her again.

“She tried to escape,” says someone Jess assumes is a doctor. “As her next of kin, we thought it best to call you.”

“Thank you,” says Viper. “If you don't mind, I'd like to talk to my daughter alone now.”

“You are not my mother,” Jess snarls.

“Delusions. So sad. This is why you're in here, baby girl. You know that, don't you?”

“Security is right outside, if you need them,” says the doctor, shutting the door to give them privacy.

“That wasn't smart, Jessica,” Viper purrs. “You broke our deal. Now there's nothing to stop me hurting your friends.”

“Don't you dare!”

“Do I start with the boy? No, I think he'd crumple in a second. The strangely patriotic one? She seems like fun. Like she'd scream and rage and -” Viper pushes her back down. “Now, now, darling, you'll hurt yourself.”

Not only has Viper locked her in a medical facility, she appears to have had her committed as well. And now Kate, America and Kevin are in more danger than before. All because she tried to run.

“What do you want, Viper?” Jess wheezes.

“Nothing more than your well being.”

“When pigs fly. Try again. What do you want with the object the kid was carrying?”

“You really think I'd tell you that?”

“No but I thought I should ask. What is it?”

“Not telling you that either. Rest now, darling. I'll bring you a souvenir when I'm done with your friends.”

Viper leaves with a flick of her emerald hair.

Regardless of Viper's threats, there's no way Jess is staying put. She has to hope that Kate is as good as Clint says she is and America is as tough as she looks. She has to hope that they'll protect Kevin. Because right now she can't help them, can barely help herself.

The problem with the previous plan was that she failed to factor in that the clinic is a closed system, in a highrise building, with security she can't see. So she needs to take the security out of the equation. Normally, she'd be up for going out the window but, given her current state, she'd probably pass out halfway through her descent and faceplant the sidewalk at terminal velocity. Not ideal.

Once she slips her cuffs again – and she will – Jess needs to get outside of the security. There's only one real option: ventilation shafts. It won't be easy, they're a lot smaller than they look in the movies, and it's probably going to make her chest worse but that's her best way out of this.

There's a knock at the window.

Fan-fucking-tastic, now she's hallucinating. She has to be as delusional as Viper claims she is because otherwise that really is Carol Danvers floating outside her window. Which cannot be the case because Carol is in space. That also can't be America floating next to her because Viper has her.

Hallucination Carol has that look on her face, the smile that says she's about to do something destructive and she's really going to enjoy it. She flies a few yards away from the building. Then, Hallucination Carol braces herself and charges headfirst at the window.

The shards of glass are definitely real, as is the bitter wind whipping its way in to the room. Which means Carol must be- But that can't be right, she's light years away, not here in Madripoor, bailing her dumb ass out.

America rips her cuffs apart like they're Play-Doh. The minute they're off, Jess raises her hands in front of her, fists clenched defensively.

“Easy,” says Carol. Oh god, if it's not her, it sure as hell sounds like her. That's the same velvety voice that has been in her daydreams for months, stroking its way across her fantasies.

“You're in _space_ ,” Jess rasps. “And Viper has you captive... somewhere.”

America snorts. “No. You're the one they took captive. You were gone when we came round so we got the fuck out of there.”

“Jess, this is Viper messing with you again,” says Carol. “She's got in you head.”

“But you're in space,” Jess says again, weakly.

“No, I'm not. I'm right here. But we've got to go, before someone notices the giant hole I just punched in the side of a skyscraper.”

“They did something to me. This,” she gestures to the mask, “isn't for show. I don't think I can fly. I barely made it out of the room without it.”

Carol's brow creases. “You can't- Okay. America, see if you can find-”

“On it,” she replies, storming out the door. There are sounds of a commotion and then America returns, holding an oxygen tank and mask.

Jess takes the tank from her then switches masks. Clutching it tightly, she climbs unsteadily from the bed. Her legs give out from under her and Jess flails, grasping for a something to steady her. Instead, Carol catches her, holds her up when her body can't.

“I've got you,” Carol says. “Ready to go?”

Jess nods. Then Carol scoops her up in her arms, like she weighs no more than a rag doll. She cradles the canister close and tries to ignore how safe she feels, held by Carol.

“I've got you,” repeats Carol.

As they fly out the shattered window, Jess thinks, _Yeah, you really do. But I don't have you, do I? And it's not like I ever will._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings for** body horror and severe illness, creepy reactions to pheromones.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: Thanks to [lauranio](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lauranio) and [serpentsbite](http://serpentsbite.tumblr.com/) for cheerleading me through this chapter.

They land on the balcony of another Hightown skyscraper. Inside is a luxurious hotel suite and a frustrated looking Kate Bishop. She takes one look at Jess, still being carried by Carol, and says,

"You look like shit. Do you need to be in a hospital? You look like you should be in a hospital."

"Thanks," Jess rasps. "You don't look so hot yourself. And no, no more hospitals."

She looks rough, dark circles under her eyes like she hasn’t slept and her hair tousled like she's been running her hands through it all night.

"We left you behind," she says. "I didn't- We shouldn't have left you."

"You didn't have a choice," Carol points out. "That's why you called me, remember?"

"Did you get Kevin out okay?" Jess asks.

"Took him home to his family," says America. "His mother was not impressed. Be surprised if he's allowed out of the house before he graduates college."

"And The It?"

"The what?" asks Carol.

"No, The It. Kate's name for the object Kevin was carrying."

"Viper got that too," Kate says, bitterly. "We don't know where she's keeping it, what it does or what she plans to do with it, and we need to-"

" _Kate_ ," interrupts Carol, using that authoritative tone she must have picked up in the Air Force, the one that makes Jess go weak at the knees. "Right now, you need to rest. Then we'll work out what to do next. Now, _go_."

Without objecting, Kate trudges towards one of the adjoining bedrooms. The fact that she hasn't protested in any way makes Jess suspicious.

"Make sure she gets some sleep?" Jess says to America. "And that she's not, I don't know, planning some raid on a dangerous terrorist organization while severely sleep deprived?"

America shrugs. "Princess does what she wants."

"Princess listens to you."

As she turns to follow Kate, America adds, "If she shoots something, I'm blaming it on you."

"That seems fair," says Carol, grinning down at her.

Jess rests her head against Carol's shoulder, content to stay safe and warm in her arms a little longer.

"You think we can get room service?" Jess asks. "Last time I ate was... yesterday morning, maybe?"

"Sure," Carol says, carrying her through to one of the bedrooms. She gently sets her down on the bed, keeps one arm wrapped around her lower back to hold her upright and builds a stack of pillows to prop her up. "What do you fancy?"

"Something that's not going to hurt my throat. Soup, maybe?"

"Chicken soup good?" Carol asks, as she reaches over for the phone.

Jess's heart falls. It felt so good to have Carol back again, she almost forgot that Carol doesn't remember her or anything about their lives together. Doesn’t remember that Jess is about the only person in America that doesn't find chicken soup comforting, finds it too salty, too broth-like. The winter before last, when Jess was sick with a flu virus even her biology struggled to shake, Carol had gone around what seemed like half of New York city looking for pea and ham soup - a stodgy soup that Jess's mum had made her when she was very little, before everything had gone to shit. Eventually Carol had conceded it was just one of those things that hadn't managed to cross the pond properly, at which point she asked Jarvis for help. He gave her two versions to take to Jess: one thin and watery, the other so thick you could almost cut it with a spoon, both bright green. Jess had almost cried.

She feels like crying again at the memory but instead she says, "Chicken soup is fine. And some chocolate, too. I need chocolate."

Carol calls it down, sitting cross-legged next to her on the bed.

"Thank you, by the way," wheezes Jess. "I haven't said that yet. For coming and breaking me out."

Carol frowns. "Do we not do that? Surely that's the bare minimum to expect from a friendship."

Of course, because Carol doesn’t remember, she doesn't know about Jess and friendships. And Jess is not about to try and enlighten her.

She doesn't tell her she's had other friends before. That, once upon a time, there was Lindsey. She doesn't tell her about how they met on a case, about the tiny apartment they shared or about Viper taking her. She doesn't say that they became business partners, detectives working together, and how they would take turns cooking each other dinner. She doesn't say that coming home to Lindsey was the best part of her day because, even though they were only friends, she was the closest thing Jess had to family.

She doesn't tell her about how they didn't argue. At the time, Jess that was a good thing, a sign they worked well together. They didn't fight but over time they just... stopped talking. She'd walk in to a room and Lindsey would walk out. She'd snap at her and Jess wouldn't know why. Then, a few weeks before their lease was up for a renewal, Lindsey told her it would be best if Jess moved out. That something wasn't right but it would be better without her around.

Suddenly, Jess was on her own again, without the fixed point she'd found in her life.

It had hurt but – according to the women's magazines she'd dutifully read – that was just what happened, friendships broke down, and toxic people were best removed from your life. She wondered if that made her a toxic person. She worked on better controlling her powers, on finding perfumes that masked them better, just in case.

She doesn't tell her about the next woman she lived with either. Doesn't tell her about how, when it happened again, Jess decided there must be something about her. So, she got her own place and tried to work out how to live without that guaranteed point of human contact.

There were other friends, of course. She doesn't tell her about them, about how the same thing happened again, how friends drifted away. The only difference between them and her roommates was that it took longer.

She definitely doesn't mention Sabrina, with her sharp eyes and laughter like music. That had been so good at the start, being with someone who understood what she did. Days off spent on the beach just talking and long, sweaty nights pressed together in bed. For a month, they probably didn't spend more than twelve hours apart. Jess let herself fantasize, believe that she could have this, could be with someone. That she might just be in love.

The second month, something changed and Sabrina was suddenly busy with work. That was okay, cops get busy, it's a demanding job, she missed her but she could wait. It made being together all the sweeter. Except she kept getting busier and, even when they were together, she was distant.

Finally came the note, left on Jess's nightstand.

_This isn't what I want. I'm sorry. Don't call me._

She stuck to men after that. It hurt less.

That was when she realized: she is toxic. She can wear as much pheromone masking perfume as she wants, can have an iron grip over her powers, it doesn't matter. In the short term, it stops men drooling and women sneering but, over time, some of them must seep out, must build up in the systems of the people around her. That's why Lindsey didn't want to live with her, why other friendships took longer to break down and why, after spending so much time together in such close quarters, Sabrina left her.

She doesn't say any of it to Carol. She just smiles and says,

"Yeah but most people wouldn’t come back from _space_ for it."

Carol blushes, not meeting her eyes. "Space was getting lonely. I mean, it's a nice place to visit..."

"But you wouldn't want to live there?"

"Right. I was starting to miss home. And the people here, too."

There's a knock at the door. Carol climbs off the bed and returns a few moments later with a tray and a large box of chocolates. It may not be what she wanted but it's not until the soup is sat steaming in front of her that Jess realizes just how hungry she is.

Carol settles herself back on the bed and watches as she wolfs the soup down.

"Did that touch the sides?" Carol asks, a smile tugging at her lips.

Jess just makes a content groaning noise and pats her stomach.

"So you won't want the chocolate too, then?"

"Gimme," she says, making grabby hands in Carol's direction.

Carol laughs and leans over to take the tray from her lap. But then she keeps leaning, keeps leaning in until her lips are on Jess's and, oh god, Carol's kissing her. Jess freezes because this- This can't be happening. Not to her.

When Jess doesn't respond, Carol pulls away,

"We're not- ?" she starts. "I'm sorry, I read that wrong."

This is so confusing. Jess has been wearing the same clothes for two days, she's a mess and she can barely breathe for herself. Carol had to come back from her big adventure to rescue her, like she's some incompetent damsel in distress, not the kind of confident, self-assured woman Carol might want. None of this makes sense.

"What just happened?" Jess asks.

"Nothing. Forget it, I misunderstood."

"No, Carol, why did you- Why did you kiss me?"

Carol sighs and wraps her arms around her knees. "With my memories, I don't have specifics. I couldn't tell you about my 21st birthday or what happened the day I was invited to join the Avengers. The memories just aren’t there. I don't even have the emotional responses to things, things I know that I used to have feelings about. Some of them are back but I've had to relearn them, they haven't returned on their own. What I sometimes get is... I guess you could call them echoes of feelings. Like I used to have strong feelings about something, strong enough that my pulse will start to race or I'll get a shot of adrenaline but I won't know why. Things like alcohol sets it off. And Karla Sofen, I know she needs a punch in the face. There's nothing to explain _how_ I know them, I just _do_. That's pretty much how I've been coping since I lost my memories. If it feels right in my gut, I go with it, if it doesn't, I don't."

"So, what about me?"

"In space, I missed you. More than anyone else, it was you I missed. Kate called, told me you were in trouble, I was so afraid. Then when we found you, it just felt right, like coming home. I added up all the pieces and assumed something must have been going on with us. You know, before. It's my mistake, don’t worry about it."

Their friendship is already nearing its best before date, the point when women can no longer ignore the sense of unease and come to realize she's the cause of it. Jess hoped the time apart would slow its progress, give the buildup some time to dissipate. Either way, she doesn't have much longer with Carol.

There's always a chance, though, that they could have this for a little while. Whatever happens, it’s going to destroy Jess because, after Carol, how could anyone else compare. But she's selfish and, if she's going to end up heartbroken anyway, why not have what she wants, just for now. Maybe, just maybe, she can make it good for Carol, really good, and that will outweigh the bad. Maybe she won't hate her completely, when it's all over.

Jess reaches over and takes her hand. Carol looks up, clear blue eyes hopeful, and Jess holds her gaze.

"We weren't," she says. "We weren't together. But, if that's what you want, we could be."

Carol smiles and it's like the sun coming out on a cloudy day, warming Jess all over.

"Would you like that?"

 _More than anything._ "Yeah, I would."

Carol kisses her again and it's amazing because this time Jess kisses her back, is allowed to kiss her back. Nothing could be better than how Carol kisses her, one hand cupping her face, gentle and insistent, tongue teasing at her lips. Carol kisses Jess like she's precious, like she's beautiful, like nothing is more important than this moment, this kiss.

How she will ever put herself back together again when this ends, Jess doesn't know.

Not even Carol's sweet lady-kisses are enough to keep her injured lungs from complaining forever. Her diaphragm starts to spasm and she pulls away, lungs roughly forcing air upwards in a painful coughing fit. She can't catch her breath, every single one violently expelled as soon as it's drawn in. Carol rubs at her back, making soothing noises, as they leave her doubled over. Her eyes water and her throat burns and, for a moment, Jess thinks the soup is going to come right back up, until she grabs a Kleenex from the nightstand and spits out a thick glob of pink sputum.

"That's new," she rasps, replacing the face mask and inhaling deeply.

Carol brings her a glass of water. "It is?"

"Yeah." She takes a sip. "Either it's a good sign or Viper's killing me slower than I thought."

Carol's frowning at her and that's not good, nothing should mar her beautiful face. If Carol's upset then Jess is failing at making their short time together perfect. Alternatively, Carol's already starting to notice the feeling but Jess won't consider that; it's too soon.

"Don't worry," Jess grins, "I'm too stubborn to die."

"Jess," Carol says. But that's all she says. Instead, she climbs on the bed, holds Jess tight and buries her face in Jess's neck. After a few moments she murmurs, "Are you sure you shouldn't be in a hospital?"

"We've got to stop Viper. And, unfortunately, I'm our best chance at that. I don't know if she genuinely believes she's my mother or if it's all an act. But it's me she's obsessed with. Not you, not America, not Kate, me. So I'm going to help you stop her. Then, _then_ , I will go see a doctor. Deal?"

"We could just leave you here and go without you. There'd be nothing you could do to stop us, you know that right?"

"Just try it, sparklefists."

"Alright. If we're going to do this, we’re going to need a plan. Preferably, one that doesn't take too long."

"You know, I've already got an idea about that."

* * *

"It won't work," says Kate.

They've moved through to the suite's living room. Properly rested - and with the furniture intact - the worry lines have receded from around Kate's eyes, as have the dark bags. America just lolls against the bar, looking smug.

"Yes it will," Jess counters, from where she's propped in an armchair, air resting next to her. "It gets us what we want, fucks Viper over and puts the fewest number of people in danger. How is this a problem?"

"If you were fully functioning, maybe - just _maybe_ \- we could pull it off. But you're not. Your plan sucks."

"No, it doesn't. I know what I'm talking about-"

"Really? Because if you did, you'd see it's-"

"This isn't running around rooftops because you're too young to drink and can't think of anything better to do."

"Fuck you, I can drink-"

"Not in the States. Hydra are a _terrorist_ organization."

"You think I don't know that?"

"No, I don’t think you do. They made me in to a spy. This is my specialty: getting in, getting what I need, getting out, and trying to do it all unseen. Not yours, not Carol's, _mine_."

"So what's mine then, huh?"

"You're a one-percenter with a bow and arrow, way too much self-confidence, and no business being here. So far yours is not getting killed."

The room falls silent. America crushes a nut with one hand.

"No wonder you don't have any friends," Kate spits.

Jess is about to hurl an insult back at her when Carol says softly, "She's right." Jess looks up at her. "Kate's right, Jess, your plan won't work."

Kate looks smug. Jess wants to punch her, would do it too, if she wasn't convinced Carol would stop her before she even got to her feet.

"That's not to say it hasn't got some good ideas," Carol continues diplomatically, "but in its current form, it's likely to get one of us killed. Jess's knowledge of Hydra - that's going to be invaluable. But we've got more resources than just that at our disposal, so let's use them."

Before Jess can say anything else, another coughing fit rips through her, leaving her breathless and sore. Carol is immediately by her side but Jess waves her off; she doesn't want to be mothered and before long Carol is going to get frustrated at not being able to _do_ anything about it.

When she's got most of it under control, Jess rasps out, "Can we take a break?"

Kate nods and slips from the room, America close behind her.

"You wanna humor the amnesiac lady and tell her what that was about?" Carol asks, handing her another glass of water.

"Nothing," replies Jess. She takes a sip of it, the coolness soothing her battered throat.

"It didn't look like nothing. It looked a lot like something. Did you two have a run in or something?"

"Not... exactly. She just- She rubs me the wrong way is all."

"That's vague and unhelpful."

Jess shrugs. "We don't get on. That's all there is to it. I don’t have to like every woman who crosses my path, do I? Pretty sure the grocery clerk is overcharging me on purpose, do I have to like her? Or how about this woman I'm house-sitting for?"

"What's wrong with her?" Carol's sly smile is enough to make heat pool in Jess's belly.

"Where to start?” Jess teases. “Crappy central heating, way too many teas for a straight woman, never calls to check in. Cannot stand her. She is the worst."

"The worst huh?" Carol says, leaning over the back of the armchair.

"Just terrible." Her warm breath catches on the skin of Jess's neck, making her shiver. "Not gonna like her ever."

Carol brushes her nose against Jess's ear and murmurs, "Don't think you get out of it that easy."

"We thought this was a break break," says Kate, from the other side of the room. "But if this is a sexy-time break, do you guys wanna go in to the bedroom so we don't have to watch?"

"We could watch," smirks America. Then she nudges Kate and raises her eyebrows meaningfully. "Billy owes me lunch."

"Those boys never learn. Their gay-dar might be great but their girl-dar sucks."

Jess does her best to avoid looking at them and Carol turns crimson.

"Anyway," Kate continues, "Jess's plan blows - no, it does - but I think I know how we can make it work."

* * *

If Jess is being honest, it's a good plan. Much better than hers was. Not that she would ever admit as much to Kate. Carol makes a few tweaks, small things borne of her tactical knowledge but other than that it's all Kate's work.

When they're all clear on their roles, Kate and America disappear off to find the things they'll need and Carol and Jess settle in to wait for nightfall.

“You still haven't told me,” says Carol, “why you don't like Kate.”

“I like Kate fine,” replies Jess. “Never said I didn't. Where's the chocolate?”

Carol sighs at Jess's blatant topic-dodging but still goes to get them from the bedroom. When she returns, Carol holds them just out of her reach.

“Tell me your problem with Kate. If it causes a problem with the plan-”

“It won't. You're gonna keep the chocolate 'til I tell you, aren't you?”

“Uh-huh.”

Jess huffs out a breath. “She's too young.”

“Anya's even younger,” Carol frowns. “You've never had a problem with her.”

“It's-” Jess rubs at her nose. “It's different for her. She has powers. She could walk away from all this but she'd still have them. Kate, she chooses to be here. And if she gets beaten half to death, she hasn't got any healing factor to help her out.”

“Neither do half the people we work with, Jess.”

“Yeah, I know. Makes me worry is all, being out there with her.” She shrugs. “Never said it made sense.”

“That's it?” Carol sounds skeptical.

“That's it.” Jess assures her. “Can I have my chocolate now?”

Except, that's not it. In fact, that's not even close to being it. But there's no way Jess is going to tell Carol the truth. She won't let her see the ugliness, the twisted ball of envy she's worked so hard to hide.

It's stupid and petty and completely pointless, she knows that. There's no point envying her but the nasty little voice comes back any time she's around Kate. It's the same little voice that whispers warnings against other women because none of them like her, not really. With Kate, it asks what makes her so special? How is it Kate can be just friends with men, have them think she's amazing, while Jess spends her time looking over her shoulder, waiting for a friend to expect something more from her? How, even when she's sleeping with them, no man ever enthuses about her the way they do about Kate.

Jess knows it's fucked up, knows it's not Kate's fault. Knows she shouldn't put so much stock in what the people around her think. Without a doubt, though, there is no fucking way she's going to let a woman like Carol ever find out how pathetic she really is. Carol walks through the world with her head high. They haven't got much longer together and Jess isn't going to spoil that by having her find out how little Jess deserves her.

She puts a chocolate in her mouth, lets the outer shell melt away, then sucks at the truffle inside. Next, she takes three the same and puts them all in her mouth at once, chews at the caramel centers, the sugar coating her mouth. They're almost good enough to distract from the pain in her chest.

“You really like chocolate, don't you?” asks Carol, a little bemused.

“Mm hfph-” Jess swallows. “I have to eat a lot. It's a poison – technically – and you know how I am with poisons. The happy kick doesn't last very long so I have to eat a lot of them to keep it going.”

Carol watches her as she demolishes the first tray, her head tipped slightly to one side, blonde hair flowing over one shoulder and a quirk playing at her lips.

“Is this weird for you?” Jess asks her.

“Is what what weird?”

“Having to relearn things. Stuff about your friends.”

“It's more weird when people assume I know stuff. A lifetime of information to relearn. I've got a lot of it but I'm not Lisbeth Salander, some of it doesn't take right away.”

“But the pop culture references are coming along fine.”

“Do I look like someone who doesn't know the difference between _Mean Girls_ and _Clueless_?”

“Now you're just showing off.”

“Little bit.”

“Get over here or I won't leave you any chocolates.”

Carol perches on the chair's arm and drapes her own across Jess's back.

“Don't need them,” Carol says, pressing a kiss to Jess's jawline. “You're plenty sweet enough.”

Jess groans at her. “That was terrible. Have you always been this cheesy?”

“I wouldn't know. But something tells me, yes.”

Carol tilts her face up and kisses her softly, licking the last remnants of chocolate from around her mouth. When she pulls back, Jess lets out a disappointed mewl. Carol leans in again, nips at her lip then deepens the kiss. Jess could melt, it feels so good. Wrapping her arms around Carol's waist, she pulls her in to her lap. Carol goes willingly, places a hand on the back of Jess's neck and presses their bodies close together.

It feels amazing, everything Jess had dreamed of but never thought she could have. She wants everything, all of it, while she still can. She kisses Carol harder, dirtier, runs her hands across her flank, inviting a response. Carol gives her one, burying fingers in her hair, caressing her breast and pushing her deeper in to the chair. Heat pools between her legs as her pulse rockets. She pants against Carol's mouth. She can't- She can't -

Carol flies from her lap. Her vision starts to go fuzzy again and she dimly hears Carol call her name. No matter how many breaths she takes, none of them seem to help, none fill her lungs. Then, the mask is back over her face and Carol's voice is in her ear saying,

“Breathe, Jess, breathe. Nice and slow. That's it, that's it.” Carol's hand is on her head, gently stroking her hair. “You okay?”

Jess nods, not quite recovered enough to reply.

“Liar,” Carol says. “There's still time to see a doctor. Before we take on Viper.”

“And have to explain... my fucked up... biology,” she wheezes. “I'll pass.”

“Then you've gotta take it easy.”

“But I wanna to do something strenuous,” Jess pouts, the effect probably diminished by the plastic mask.

“I know, I wouldn't want to keep my hands off this either,” Carol says, gesturing to herself. “But not if it makes you worse, Jess.”

“Fine,” she huffs.

“Don't sulk.” Carol leans down and presses feather-light kisses to her neck.

“Sulking? Who's sulking? Not me. Keep doing that.”

It's everything Jess wants – minus the fucked up lungs courtesy of her very own obsessive psychopath – but all she can think, as Carol trails them further and further down, licks at the curve of her collarbone, is that she wishes it could last forever. Of course, she might be in love but she's no fool. There's no part of her that believes it ever will.

* * *

Madripoor being the kind of place where the right amount of money in the right pocket can persuade almost anyone to look the other way, the Hydra base is not tucked in a Lowtown back alley, hidden behind a food stand and disguising itself as a bookmakers. No, it's a Hightown skyscraper. A whole skyscraper. In fact, it's the same one they rescued Jess from earlier that day.

That's not to say the lobby isn't pretending to be something else. It's all glass and chrome with neatly listed dummy companies and security gates that require key cards to get through. Nothing at ground level suggests it's anything less than legitimate.

Jessica walks unaided through the front doors, in full costume, right up to the security desk, and looks the guard straight in the eye.

“Hi,” she says. “I'm here to see Miriam Drew.”

“There's no one here by that name,” he says, not even bothering to look at his records.

“Really? Could've sworn this is the place.” She leans on the desk. “Do me a favor? Call your supervisor and check? I'd hate to have come all this way for nothing.”

“Ma'am, I'm sorry-”

“ _Please._ ” She can't exactly bat her eyelashes behind her mask but Jess does her most seductive little lip tremble at him.

He picks up the phone and relays the name, without ever taking his eyes off of her, as though, if he does, she might do something terrible.

The heavy  _thomp thomp thomp_ of booted feet signals the arrival Jess has been expecting. She turns to face at least a dozen green-suited Hydra thugs.

“Hello boys,” she grins. “You looking for me?”

Acrobatics might be outside her abilities right now but she can still climb. She goes straight up the glass wall and across the ceiling, hiding herself in among the ventilation pipes. Far below, she hears the clicking of weapons being armed.

“Hold you fire!” shouts an authoritative voice. “Jessica, darling, come down from there.”

“No, I'm good,” she calls down. Already, she can feel the strain just being up here is putting on her injured lungs. “Short of killing me, pretty sure there's nothing you can do to me up here.”

“I've already told you,” says Viper, “we don't want you dead.”

“Then what do you want?”

“The same thing we've always wanted: you to come home. Doesn't matter how hard you try, you'll never truly be an Avenger. They don't understand you, not like we do. We love you no matter what.”

“Hydra killed my mother – my _real_ mother – what makes you think I'd ever come back to you?”

“You're here, aren't you?”

“Good... point.” She drops from the ceiling, landing nimbly and startling the goons. “Say- Say things weren't going so great with the Avengers. Say – _hypothetically –_ I wasn't happy with them. What could you offer me?”

Viper studies her shrewdly. “Walk with me, Jessica.”

The security gates part as Viper steps towards them, Jess trailing closely behind. They round the corner towards the elevators and – yep, there it is – the giant Hyrda logo on the wall at the end of the corridor. She leads them in to one of the wood paneled elevators, two goons flanking them on either side.

“You mentioned before,” says Jess as the elevator pings it's way up the levels, “that you've got notes about me. Are they my father's? About the the process that made me? 'Cause I thought I destroyed all that.”

“Not all of it. Your fireworks dispatched the specimens, as well as any handwritten parts. Your father too, of course. But he did make some back-ups. We can't make any more like you but we have bits and pieces.”

“Enough to...” Jess slips in to silence.

“What's this about, Jessica?”

“My powers, they're out of control. I don't know where else to go.”

“Say we could help, what would we get in return?”

“Me. Back for good.”

“And what would your little Avengers friends say about that, huh?”

“I'm doing this to protect them.” She wraps her arms around herself. “I don't expect them to understand.”

The doors slide open and they step out. From the two adjacent elevators come the rest of Viper's goons.

“What makes you think they're malfunctioning?” asks Viper, leading them all down a bland carpeted corridor. “Maybe this is exactly what they're meant to do?”

“They drive people away.” The walk's already made her a little breathless but she keeps talking. “Pretty sure that's not a desirable trait in a spy. Especially if you designed me for deep cover.”

They round a corner and suddenly they're in an enclosed garden. In the daytime, light would stream in from the north and south windows. In the center of the room stands a broad metal sculpture composed of three flame-like tendrils licking their way upwards from a central base. One tendril is entirely smooth, another textured. The middle tendril has the same texturing extending up one side. As Jess draws closer, pebbles crunching beneath her feet, she sees that what she took for texturing is names, hundreds and hundreds of names, engraved on the sculpture.

“What is this place?” Jess murmurs.

“You think us monsters, Jessica,” says Viper, coming up behind her. “But even monsters honor their dead.”

Unbidden, Jess's eyes flick to the sculpture.

“Yes, he's up there,” Viper whispers in her ear. “I made sure of it.”

There's no reason for the pang of grief that rockets through her. He's long dead and he was a terrorist; he's long since ceased being her father. But, once upon a time, he was her daddy and there's a little girl somewhere deep inside her, the little girl who went to the coma and never really grew up, who misses that man.

“What's wrong with your powers?” asks Viper.

“Same thing that's always been wrong with them.”

“Just because you don't like them,” she purrs, wrapping an arm around Jess's waist., “doesn't mean they don't work. They're exactly as they're meant to be. You just got them a little earlier than planned.”

“Tell me, then” Jess demands, twisting out of her grip. “My parents, they're dead, they can't tell me anything. But you, you claim to know so much. So tell me why. Tell me why they made me this way.”

“Well now,” Viper smiles sweetly. “It wouldn't do to make you too powerful, now would it?”

And suddenly, it all makes sense. The ability to manipulate men is incredibly useful to any spy. In most cultures, they hold the lion's share of political and economic capital. By giving her a way to influence them, her parents gave her access to almost every state, industrial and economic secret she desires – and all with a little puff of pheromones.

Women, on the other hand, are a different matter. She's never understood why, with one puff of the same pheromones, they automatically dislike her. Jess has never seen any tactical advantage in that aspect of her powers. Powers that her father, with Hydra's backing, so carefully crafted.

It was never about making her a better spy; it was about making her a less dangerous one. A woman who influences men is still, ultimately, reliant on them. A woman with the support and friendship of other women has the ability to choose.

Hydra – her father – designed a way to keep her shackled.

A sound like thunder ripples through the building. Alarms start wailing and everyone around her tenses. A goon comes running full tilt down the corridor towards them.

“Intruder on the roof,” he pants. “Avenger. We think it's Captain Marvel.”

Another thunderous noise shakes the building.

“Oh god,” Jess breathes. “She's here for me. She thinks I need rescuing again.”

A third echoes through the building followed by a sickening crunch. Debris falls past the windows.

“Please, I can't go back,” she begs Viper. “And I can't fight, not with my chest like this.”

“Get reinforcements,” she says to one of her thugs. “As many as can be spared. Bring them here to protect Jessica.”

“Shouldn't we move?” asks another goon. “Get somewhere more secure?”

The building shakes again, louder this time.

“She's nearly here,” gasps Jess.

More thugs arrive, clomping their way down the corridor. They form a tight circle around her and Viper, weapons raised. Another crash above them, closer than before. The goons look up nervously, trigger fingers twitching.

Jess sinks to her knees, clutching her chest, breathing shallow.

“Momma's here, darling,” says Viper. “I won't let her take you.”

With a final smash, the ceiling cleaves in two. Through the hole barrels Carol, fists raised and looking pissed.

_You are many things, Viper,_ Jess thinks as she sends a sting straight in to her spine,  _but you were never my mum._

Viper crumples. Jess expended too much energy on it but she doesn't care. She really wanted it to hurt. The thugs nearest them startle, too focused on Carol to anticipate an attack from Jess. That's the way she likes it.

Staying low, she sweeps a leg out, flattening a goon and knocking another down with him. She ducks as one takes aim at her head with the butt of his rifle. Grabbing it, she jams it hard in to his crotch with a satisfying crunch. Another lashes out with his feet, heavy boot flying at her. She scoots back, narrowly misses the kick and sends one of her own at his knee. It bends backwards with a sickening crack and a scream from its owner.

She's not done much but she can already feel the toll it's taking on her. Her muscles ache and her chest is too tight. She grits her teeth, takes as deep a breath as she's able, tucks her head in and throws her full body-weight at a thug. He's winded but doesn't go down. Then, she climbs on his back and gets him in a choke hold, squeezes tight until he staggers to the ground.

Using him as a springboard, she sends a roundhouse kick at another's head. Either he's smarter than his colleagues or her tired muscles are making her slow because he dodges it, causing Jess to overbalance. An elbow connects between her shoulder blades, knocking her down. She tries to get up but there's a boot digging in to her back, holding her down, not to mention the pain in her lungs, making it harder to fight back. She reaches up, grips the leg and zaps it with everything she's got.

The leg's gone but she's still struggling to breathe. She wills herself to _get the hell up_ but willpower alone is not enough when her body is too weak to cooperate. She gets her hands underneath her, locks her elbows and pushes the rest of her up.

A boot connects with her jaw, sends her flying. Blood fills her mouth. She spits it on to the ground and forces herself back up on to hands and knees. Every breath feels like it's cutting her. The ringing in her ears is back. She blinks rapidly, trying to clear her vision and stay clear of any more stray boots. Keeping low to the ground, she grabs at a couple of ankles and zaps them enough to make their owners buckle.

She looks up, trying to stay aware, even as everything turns muggy. There are fewer goons now but she doesn't know where Viper is. Behind the ringing are the dull sounds of the fight.

The last thing Jess registers before the blackness pulls her under again is Carol tearing through the thugs, like a lioness through a litter of rabbits, to get to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings for** severe respiratory injury and some body horror.


	4. Chapter 4

_Carol circles the tower at a safe distance, waiting for her cue._

“ _My powers, they're out of control,” Carol hears Jess say over their comms. “I don't know where else to go.”_

_Up here, the wind whips around her. To anyone else it would be bitter and unpleasant. To Carol, it's familiar, flicking at her hair as it soothes her anxieties about Jess's task._

“ _Me. Back for good,” Jess continues._

_It's not that she doubts Jess can dupe Viper – she has every faith in her abilities – but this isn't like any other infiltration. These are the people who for years have hurt her, who've hunted her, who just this morning had her cuffed to a bed. And now she's walked in there alone._

“ _I'm doing this to protect them. I don't expect them to understand.”_

_Even though she knows Jess is acting, she sounds so sad that Carol wants badly to comfort her. To just go to her, hold her, do her best to make it better._

_God, she's got it bad._

“ _They drive people away. Pretty sure that's not a desirable trait in a spy. Especially if you designed me for deep cover.”_

_The mics on the tiny earbuds Kate and America brought back from their supply run are just powerful enough to catch the speaker's words but not much else. Truthfully, she's grateful. Hearing Viper's voice right now would probably only make her more tense. On the other hand, at least she'd know what kind of poison the green haired freak's pouring in to Jess's ears._

“ _What is this place?”_

_It's not time yet for her part of the plan, she knows that, but the pernicious combination of impatience and worry means she really wants to punch something._

“ _Same thing that's always been wrong with them.”_

_Just acting, she reminds herself, ignoring the bitterness in Jess's tone._

“ _Tell me, then. My parents, they're dead, they can't tell me anything. But you, you claim to know so much. So tell me why. Tell me why they made me this way.”_

_Carol's grateful that her signal comes through because, if it hadn't, she was likely to start punching things anyway._

_She lands on the roof, slap bang in the middle of the helipad. There's no one up here, which is a shame; beating on Hydra would make her feel so much better. She cracks her knuckles. This is no time for subtlety._

“ _Oh, I'm gonna enjoy this,” she says to herself and punches down with enough power to shatter the concrete._

_It gives way beneath her fist and the roof collapses on to the floor below. An alarm starts to wail. Then Carol flies away from the building, high enough to look out over all of Madripoor, gets a run up, and charges headfirst through the hole, crashing through several levels, shaking the building._

“ _Oh god. She's here for me. She thinks I need rescuing again.”_

_Damn right she's here for Jess. And she's going to keep heading down until she finds her. She smashes the floor again. On the next level, a shocked looking Hyrda thug makes the mistake of raising his weapon at her. Carol throws a desk at him. He ducks, narrowly missing the desk, and it punches through several dividing walls in a puff of plaster dust. She grabs a chunk of broken concrete and – just because she likes the symmetry of holes in both the internal and external walls – launches it through the window with a crash._

“ _Did you want something?” Carol says, turning to the goon._

_He stammers, looks like he's going to piss himself, and then flees. Carol shrugs._

“ _Please, I can't go back,” Jess says in her ear. “And I can't fight, not with my chest like this.”_

_Carol tears up the carpet and punches down again, breaking through to the next level. This one has what appears to be lab equipment of some kind. She takes a special kind of pleasure in smashing an expensive-looking machine in to a bank of computers._

“ _She's nearly here.”_

Good **,** _thinks Carol before splitting the floor apart. It gives even easier than the other levels and she all but falls through in to something that looks like a zen garden._

_Beyond the tight circle of Hydra goons – with their guns pointed right at Carol, waiting to see what she'll do next – is Jess, knelt at Viper's feet, clutching herself._

_Then Jess looks up from the floor. There's nothing scared or submissive about the rage flaring behind her eyes. There's only determination as she unwraps an arm from around her waist, shoves her fist in to the small of Viper's back and zaps her with enough power that it flashes bright blue._

_Viper falls so the ground and the thugs, not expecting a attack from within their ranks, temporarily take their attention off her. It's the distraction she needs to get airborne again, grabbing a couple by the necks of their hideous green suits, and flying back up the way she came. She deposits them high enough up the building that they won't cause them any more trouble. The way she bangs their heads together doesn't hurt either._

_As she flies back downwards, Carol can hear the sounds of Jess going at it with some of the goons. She blasts one in the gut as Jess clings to another, arms tight around his neck. The next one Carol takes out with a flying tackle and rams him in to two others, smushing them against the ugly-ass sculpture in the middle of the room. They land in an unconscious heap at the base of it._

_Something hits Carol in the shoulder, knocking her forward. She spins around and comes face to face with a rifle. The thug fires again, an energy blast to her chest. It smarts but doesn't stop Carol from punching him hard enough to send him flying. She grabs another and throws him at the sculpture, adding to the pile there._

_She hears a spitting noise and catches sight of Jess, on the ground, barely keeping herself up, mouth bloody. Carol's heart-rate spikes, fear briefly overwhelming her. She channels that in to her fists, taking out another two goons in quick succession. Jess shakes her head groggily, like she's trying to stay awake._

_From the dull crunch, Carol thinks she breaks the jaw of the next thug she punches. She pulls another forward, brings her knee up to connect with his face, then tosses him aside. There's breath on her neck so she grabs the next one, hauls him over her shoulder and smacks him bodily on the ground. Her foot connects with the knee of the next thug and it bends backward with a crack. He wails but she doesn't care; each one brings her closer to Jess._

_The arms holding Jess up give out and she falls forward, collapsing awkwardly on top of them._

_Carol grabs each of the remaining goons and tosses them aside, not caring how much damage she does to them just so long as they won't be getting up any time soon._

_Crouching down, she takes Jess in to her arms, being so careful with her. Jess might flop like a ragdoll but she's so much more breakable. Her breathing is shallow, almost imperceptible. It's only because of the strength of Carol's hearing that she even notices it. All Carol wants to do is get Jess out of here, get her to safety._

_From the corner of her eye Carol catches movement. She turns to see Viper, still shaky from Jess's sting, lurch towards her._

“ _What did you do to her?” Viper snarls._

“ _Me?” says Carol, setting Jess back down. “You're the one who hurt her.”_

“ _She was going to come home!”_

“ _Yeah, she was. But not to you.”_

_They circle the room, mirroring each others steps, careful to avoid tripping over the strewn bodies. Carol doesn't take her eyes from her. Viper just glares._

“ _How long do you think she'll stay?” Viper asks. “She said it herself, her powers aren't in her control. How long before you can't stand the sight of her? Or before your boyfriend finds her more attractive than you?”_

_Carol laughs grimly. “You really don't know her at all do you?”_

“ _I know what she believes. She believes she'll always be alone because that's how her powers work. That only us – only Hydra – can possibly change that. We gave her those powers after all. So ask yourself: are you and your_ Avengers _,” she spits the word, “really what's best for her?”_

“ _Can you help her control them?”_

“ _Why would we do that?” Viper laughs. “She's better like this.”_

_Carol's hands curl in to tight fists. “Then, yeah, we are.”_

_A thug – who Carol obviously wasn't rough enough with if he's regained consciousness already – tries to sneak up behind her but, without taking her eyes off Viper, Carol elbows him in the face. From the wet crunch, she thinks she probably broke his nose._

“ _It's just us here, Viper. Your thugs are down. Your reinforcements won't get here in time. How do you think this is going to go for you?”_

_Carol takes a step towards her._

“ _She'll come back to me,” Viper hisses._

“ _No. She won't.”_

_Viper looks like she might actually be afraid as Carol advances on her._

“ _Fine, take her, she's what you came for.”_

“ _Oh, honey,” Carol sneers. “We were just the distraction.”_

_Then, putting all her pent up fury, outrage and hatred behind it, she knocks Viper unconscious with a single punch._

* * *

This time, when Jess comes to, the first thing she notices is the hand holding hers. Its nails are short, with sensible, rounded tips. The thumb rubs gentle, soothing circles on the back of her hand.

She looks up at its owner who smiles down at her warmly.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” says Carol.

“Hey yourself,” whispers Jess, throat still sore. Her jaw aches where she got kicked; it feels swollen. She tries to sit up but Carol's firm hand on her shoulder suggests strongly against it.

“You need to stay in bed. Doctor's orders. Stephen will be in to look you over again in a bit, now you're awake. And there's oxygen next to the bed if you need it.”

Jess was so focused on Carol – who is still _holding her hand_ – she completely failed to take in her surroundings. A beginners mistake but, in her defense, _Carol_ and _hand holding._ She's in medical at the tower. It's not her first visit, probably won't be her last, but at least it's safe and familiar and _Carol is holding her hand._

“What happened?” she murmurs.

“You passed out during the fight,” Carol says.

“Well that's embarrassing,” Jess mutters to herself.

“Not really. Stephen thinks you just put too much strain on your body, it needed more oxygen than your lungs could provide. You did great, Jess.”

“Yeah?”

“Viper bought every word you told her.”

Jess wishes that felt like the compliment Carol intended it to be. All she did was spin the truth in a way Viper wanted to hear.

“Did we-” Jess has to stop and clear her throat. “Did we get the It?”

* * *

“ _Stop squirming,” America tells her._

“ _I'm not squirming,” Kate says._

“ _Stop it or I'm gonna drop you.”_

“ _Is that a threat?”_

“ _You don't stop squirming, it is.”_

_Kate rolls her eyes and goes limp. America smirks and tightens her grip around her waist as they rise up the side of the building. The darkness gives them enough cover to fly unnoticed._

_America stops at a window halfway up, indistinguishable from any of the others. The little smile Kate gives her radiates mischief. She pecks America on the lips, then twists in her arms and pulls an arrow from her quiver._

“ _Captain,” says Kate. “Time to make some noise.”_

“ _Oh, I'm gonna enjoy this,” America hears over the comms._

_The building shakes as an almighty force crashes in to it from above._

_America flies them right up to the glass. With the diamond-tipped arrow, Kate starts to cut a hole in the glass. The building shakes again, jarring her hand. She works slowly, held up by America, grinding through the glass. Every time the building tremors, Kate's hand slips, leaving a long scratch in the glass. She completes the circle, just big enough for the two of them to fit through, and the glass, with one little push, falls forward on to the carpet, landing with a muffled thud._

_The office on the other side of the glass is dark and silent. Late at night, the building's staff have mostly gone home and, those that remain, are too distracted by the chaos Carol's causing. Kate launches herself from America's arms, slips through the hole and lands with a roll. America just shakes her head then follows her through._

_They make their way through the office and out in to the vault room. As expected, everyone who isn't essential has cleared out. On the other side of the vault, with his back to them, is the one remaining Hydra thug. Wordlessly, America tells Kate to hang back then, without making a sound, she flies across to him and wraps an arm around his throat, cutting off his air. He struggles but, with her hand across his mouth muffling the sound, he goes down quickly enough._

“ _Where is it?” Kate asks her._

_The whole room is filled with packing crates. Every few yards is a bench to pack the artifacts on. America closes her eyes. She can hear the It calling to her, a sound low and rhythmic like a heartbeat. It's so loud, so desperate to be found, it starts to overwhelm her senses; no wonder Kevin couldn't resist taking it. She focuses, trying hard to pinpoint it._

“ _There,” she gasps, pointing to a small crate on one of the benches. “That one.”_

_America flinches as Kate picks it up, afraid it will infect her mind._

“ _Do it,” Kate instructs. She hesitates. “America, c'mon.”_

_Filtering out its pleading cries, she punches a portal to a nowhere dimension in the middle of the room. Kate throws it through and she seals it back up as quickly as possible. The thrumming in her head disappears._

“ _Let's get out of here,” America says._

_She breaks down the reinforced door of the vault and they head out in to the corridor. A goon spots them but, before he has time to raise the alarm, Kate shoots him with a tranq arrow. They make it to the elevators and America pulls open the doors to the elevator shaft. She holds out her arm to Kate._

“ _Going up,” she smirks._

_She wraps her arms around Kate's waist and they take off at speed, stale oily air whipping past them. At the top of the shaft, she pulls the doors apart again. They fly out in to a small aircraft hanger. There's another thug but, before Kate has a chance to loose an arrow or America to punch his lights out, he hits the alarm._

_America swears and drops Kate, who lands gracefully. She notches an arrow, firing at the first of the reinforcements._

“ _We need a plane,” Kate shouts._

_America sprints to the nearest one. It's a small plane, like a cheap knockoff quinjet. She tries the door – it's unlocked because who locks anything when it's on the second highest level of a super secret base. She tears it open and climbs in._

“ _Hawkeye,” she calls behind her, “time to go!”_

“ _Little busy!” she replies._

_America dives for the controls, looks for something that looks like an on switch. She hears Kate climb in to the jet and slam the door behind her._

“ _Go go go!” Kate orders._

“ _I don't-”_

“ _Move over!”_

_Kate flies in to the now empty pilot's seat and jams the ignition._

“ _You know how to fly?” America asks._

“ _Ye- No. But I've watched Noh. And that was alien. How hard can it be?”_

_The plane lurches forward. America throws herself in to the nearest seat and buckles in. The hangar door is still open, Hyrda goons rushing to get it closed. They get out the doors just in time, the jet launches in to open air... and immediately starts to nosedive._

“Kate! _” she screams as the ground gets closer, Kate hitting buttons seemingly at random._

“ _I'm working on it, I'm working on it,” she mutters. The engines roar and they pull up sharply. “_ Whoo-hoo! _”_

_A familiar voice comes over the comms._

“ _Hope you guys are ready,” says Carol. “'Cause I'm coming out hot.”_

“ _We got the jet,” replies Kate. “Holding steady on the south side of the building.”_

_Out the windshield, America sees a window shatter, followed by Carol, a blue and red streak, zoom through the hole. As she gets nearer, America can also see she's holding something in her arms. America unbuckles and heads to the back of the plane to let her in._

_The temperature drops rapidly as she opens the door. Carol lands with a boneless Jess cradled in her arms._

“ _Is she okay?” America asks as she closes the door after them._

“ _Yeah,” replies Carol, looking down at Jess tenderly. “She's breathing, she's just unconscious.”_

_It looks for a moment like she won't let Jess go. Then, the engines stutter and the plane jerks awkwardly._

“ _Little help here,” Kate says._

_Carol sets Jess down on the floor very gently. She rips a seat pad from its base and uses it to cushion her head. Then, with a last apologetic look, she turns and strides towards the cockpit._

“ _Out the way,” she says to Kate, who scoots away, looking grateful. Carol takes the pilot seat and the jet sails forward smoothly. “Next stop: New York.”_

* * *

“Did we-” Jess clears her throat. “Did we get the It?”

“Yeah Jess, we got it. America threw it in to a dimension where it will never bother anybody ever again. Turns out there are actually dimensions where there's nothing living. Think that's where she put it.”

“What about the scientists? Didn't they want to... poke it or whatever the boffins do?”

“America decided it's too dangerous to let them near it. I still don't know what it does but she doesn't strike me as someone who scares easily. And that girl was scared.”

There's a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Jess croaks.

“How are you feeling, Jessica?” Strange asks.

“Like someone shredded my lungs to make me more compliant – No, wait, that actually happened.” She tries to laugh hollowly but it just ends in a coughing fit, Jess curled fetal, gasping for breath. “Ow.”

Carol begins rubbing her back sympathetically. It feels amazing and she wants to stretch, cat-like, in to it, wants her to rub other things...

Strange is saying something, something Jess should really be paying attention to. Something about tests.

Turns out, there are a lot of tests. Some, like the blood-pressure cuff and having her temperature taken, she recognizes and vaguely knows what they're for. Others, like the weird cardboard tube she has to blow in to and the multiple vials of blood Strange takes, she has no idea about. However, she's pretty certain there's a couple that wouldn't be familiar to the A.M.A.; she doesn't really want to think about what they're for.

“How did you feel when this first happened?” Strange asks, when he finally finishes his test.

“Bad. Really, really bad. My nose, throat, windpipe, chest – all of it hurt. If I didn't have the oxygen mask on, it felt like I was going to suffocate.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Jess sees the normally stoic Carol flinch involuntarily.

“And now?”

“Less painful, more achy. Kinda like a chest infection, I'd guess.”

His professional mask slips for a moment and he smiles at that.

“Normally,” he explains, “The alveoli in the lungs, once damaged, don't repair themselves. In your body, this doesn't seem to be the case. Whether this is a side effect of your toxin resistance or something else, such as your wider healing factor, I can't say. What I can say is that your lungs appear to be healing themselves but, given the bruising to your face, your body's prioritized the most serious injuries first. If you'll regain full capacity, only time and regular monitoring will tell but it certainly looks that way.”

“So, I'm gonna be okay?” Jess asks, hopefully.

“I should think so, yes.”

Jess grins big and dopey and overjoyed and relieved and -

“However,” Strange says, interrupting her rejoicing, “That will not happen if you don't take it easy and look after yourself.”

“I can do that,” Jess says. Carol snorts. “What? I can.”

“Uh-huh.” Carol doesn't sound convinced. “You'll be climbing the walls within the week. And takeout isn't taking care of yourself food.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“If you wanted... I mean, your stuff's still at my place... We could...” She trails off.

Jess pretends to consider her offer. “Are you gonna make me eat kale? 'Cause I'm not coming home with you if it involves kale.”

“Can you deal with kale fried in bacon grease?”

“Oh _baby_ , you're talking my language.”

Strange clears his throat.

“Shall I leave you two to figure this out?” he asks.

“My only condition is we get a space heater,” Jess says. “Cold can't be good for my lungs, right doc?”

“Not especially. But so long as it's warm enough, there's no reason you can't go home.”

Jess likes the way Carol's being referred to as home makes her feel. She can't get too used to it but, for now, it feels good.

“Okay then,” Carol says. She's practically beaming. “Hey, Stephen, can I have a word with you about something before we go?”

“Of course.”

Carol presses a kiss to Jess's forehead. “Let me wrap this up then we'll get out of here.”

* * *

A loud knock at the door rouses Jess from her book. Carol can't be back already and, it's not like they bother locking the door so she doesn't have any keys to forget. She puts it down, spine facing up and goes to see who it is.

“Hey, Jess,” says Anya then punches her hard in the upper arm.

“Ow!” she shouts, clutching at it. “What was that for?”

“So, _Kevin's_ home.” She crosses her arms over her chest.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, 'oh'. Were you gonna tell me?”

In the two days since they returned from Madripoor, Jess and Carol have spent most up it curled up together on the couch – occasionally joined by Chewie when she feels like it – watching TV. Between Carol's memory loss having erased all her favorite shows and there being no Netflix in space, she has a lot to catch up on. Snuggled up in their nest, exchanging soft kisses, the world could be ending and Jess isn't sure she would have noticed.

On the other hand, Anya brought the case to her because she needed help. And Jess has been so love-drunk she didn't even have the decency to tell her she'd found him, to tell her that he was safe. Yeah, she probably deserves much worse than a punch in the arm.

The metal stairs clank and a familiar figure jogs up to them.

“Did you-” Kamala pants. “Did you climb up the side?”

“Spider-powers,” Anya grins.

“All those _stairs_ ,” she wails, doubling over. “Hi, Jess.”

“Hey. You two wanna come in?”

Anya stomps in to the room and drops on to the couch with indignation. Kamala follows but perches next to her, bolt upright and hands in her lap. Chewie, sat in the middle of the floor, a sunbeam illuminating her fur, eyes them both warily.

“You're right,” Jess admits. “I should have called you the minute we knew he was safe but... things got a bit hairy.”

“Wolverine showed up?”

“Wh- No, not that kind of hairy.”

Jess turns at the sound of the door opening. Carol strides in, carrying grocery bags.

“So, I got choc chip and I got fudge brownie, 'cause I figure even you can't eat both cartons on your own-” She stops abruptly. “There are teenagers in my apartment. Jess did you adopt some kids and not tell me?”

“Anya wanted to know what happened with Kevin. And Kamala,” Jess realizes she doesn't actually know why Kamala's here, “came along for the ride?”

“I really needed to get out of the house. Pakistan are behind to India on the third day of the test and I just couldn't handle the tension any more.”

Carol looks confused but too polite to ask.

“It's cricket,” Jess explains. “Think Mets-Yankees but instead of just New York City, you've got roughly a billion people invested in the outcome.”

Carol lets out a low whistle. “I can see why you'd want out of there.”

Kamala cocks her head slightly, like she's trying to figure out how Jess knew what she was talking about.

“My parents are English,” Jess shrugs. “My dad was a fan.”

Some of Jess's few good memories of her father involve cricket. She would sit quietly in one corner of his lab with her coloring, the longwave radio crackly as it broadcast a match. The twack of leather against willow and the polite applause of the crowd was almost hypnotic. The voices of the two commentators, one English, the other Australian, were as familiar to her as any TV character's. So long as she was quiet, he was happy for her to be there, would sometimes look up and smile at her. When rain eventually stopped play or the game broke for tea, he'd take a break too, come look at her coloring. He was always warmer towards her when the cricket was on, as if the folk memory of sunny English afternoons and village greens softened him somehow.

One of the benefits to living in America: no one gives a shit about it here. Well, almost no one. She never has to hear about it, never gets transported back to a time when he was kind and she was loved.

Jess shakes her head, trying to clear away the memories.

“What was it you wanted to know?” Carol asks Anya, crossing the room to put the ice cream away.

“How you got Kevin home.” Then, she mutters to herself, “And why the hell Jess couldn't tell me herself.”

Obviously Carol heard her. She turns to face Anya, draws herself up to her full height, towering over the seated teenagers.

“Did Jessica tell you what happened to her on this one?” Under the weight of Carol's gaze, Anya doesn't say anything. “Did she?”

Anya shifts awkwardly and shakes her head.

“She got injured. Pretty badly. She's spent the last few days recovering. _That's_ why she didn't call you.”

“Oh,” Anya says quietly.

“Yeah.” Carol softens and gives her shoulder a quick squeeze. “Jess needed to look after herself for a little while first. But we hadn't forgotten about you, promise.”

That last part is news to Jess but she's not going to touch it.

“You alright now?” Anya asks her, sounding small.

“Still sore in places I really wish I wasn't but, yeah, I'm on the mend.” Jess clears her throat; her chest still smarts. She takes a seat on the arm of the couch next to Kamala. “So, Madripoor. Those ninjas that led us there, they were hired by someone I have history with. But the reason Kevin went missing is he picked up some powers in the mists.”

“He's Inhuman?” Kamala asks. “Like me?”

Jess nods. “He can slip between dimensions. In one of them he found something.”

“The It,” says Carol.

“Right. The It seems to get in to the heads of people who can jump dimensions. That's why an otherwise happy kid went missing – it took him.”

“Jess also ran in to Hawkeye and Miss America in Madripoor. Hawkeye is... well, she's Hawkeye. But Miss America is a dimension jumper too.”

“The people who hired the ninjas were looking for the It. I figure they used ninjas 'cause they're stealthier than their usual goons. Anyway, Miss America was looking for the It too. The three of us got to Kevin and the It but the ninjas weren't far behind. They took us all out and took the It.”

“When they came round, they realized the ninjas had taken Jess and the It. That's when they called me for help. America led Kevin through a few dimensions 'til they got to New York, then came back to help us. We worked out where they'd taken her and went to break her out. But when we found her, Jess was in a bad way.” Carol looks over at her and the tenderness in her eyes makes Jess's stomach flip over. “We broke her out and then went and broke back in.”

“Hawkeye and Miss Marvel stole the It from under their noses while we distracted them. It was pretty great.”

“What did you do with it?” Anya asks.

“America threw it where it should never be found again,” Jess answers. “Provided Kevin doesn't go traveling at random, he should be safe from it.”

“I'm sorry I was so-”

“No, I should have let you know sooner. Am I forgiven, Spider-Mite?”

Anya rolls her eyes, her indignation fake now. “It's Spider- _Girl._ ”

Kamala's still next to Anya, back straight and obviously trying her hardest to be polite in someone else's home. Jess leans down and whispers in her ear,

“You can talk to her you know. She won't bite.”

Kamala bites her lip. Anya pokes her in the ribs.

“Carol's super nice,” Anya murmurs. “Just talk to her.”

Carol watches this with an amused quirk to her lips. She extends her hand to Kamala, who eyes it apprehensively.

“Hi. I'm Carol,” she says. “Pleased to meet you.”

“HiCarolsuchabigfanI'msosorryIstoleyournameI'mKamalabythewaybutthat'snotthenameIstole-” She slaps her hand over her mouth. Then she takes a deep breath. “I'm the new Ms Marvel. I hope that's okay?”

“Jess?”

“Oh she's awesome,” Jess assures her.

“And you can't steal a name no one's using,” Anya points out.

“That is true,” say Carol. “Jess likes you, Anya likes you, the name was going unused and, so long as you don't do any super-villainy while you've got it, I don't mind. You're not going to do any super-villainy are you?”

Kamala shakes her head vigorously. “Nuh-uh, no way, definitely not.”

Carol smiles at her. “Well, alright then.”

A phone beeps.

“Oh, that's me,” says Kamala. She reads the message, frowning. “I better get going, I gotta get home in time for dinner.”

“And I've got evening patrol,” adds Anya as she gets to her feet. “See you around?”

“See you around, kid,” says Jess, fist-bumping Anya on her way out the the door. “You too, Kamala.”

“Bye.” She waves at them a little awkwardly before following Anya out of the apartment.

Jess hears Anya call out, “Race you to the bottom!”

“No fair!” Kamala shouts back. “You don't have to take the stairs!”

The door slams behind them as strong arms snake around her waist from behind. Carol nuzzles her ear.

“For someone who doesn't like kids,” she says, “you're really good with those two.”

Jess shrugs. “They're more like... under-cooked adults. They've got their own personalities, opinions. And they don't get snot everywhere.”

The arms tighten and Carol presses warm little kisses down her neck. Her head falls back on to Carol's shoulder. She makes a content little sound.

“You like that?” Carol murmurs.

“If I could purr right now, I would.”

Chewie stops licking her paw and looks up at them from her warm patch of carpet.

Carol licks her collarbone. She shivers.

“How are your lungs?”

“Fuck my lungs.”

Carol loosens her grip.

“No no no,” Jess says, turning in her arms. “They're good.”

Carol looks skeptical.

They've kept their affections clothing compulsory so far; Carol for fear of undoing Jess's progress and Jess hasn't wanted to push her in case she pushed Carol's affections away as well.

“I'm not gonna stop breathing if kiss me too hard,” Jess insists, arms going around Carol's neck.

“Really?” she smirks. “'Cause I'm pretty good. So, if you end up in medical...”

“It will be.” Jess presses a kiss to her jawline. “All.” Another to her brow. “Your.” Her cheekbone. “ _Fault._ ” The tip of her nose.

“Well if you're willing to take the ri-”

Jess cuts her off by pulling her in and kissing her firmly on the mouth. Carol hums her pleasure as her hands tighten around Jess's waist.

“Bedroom,” Carol murmurs against her lips.

Instead of moving, they get distracted licking their way in to each others mouths, neither really willing to pull away. It's not until Carol's hands rove down to her behind that Jess brings her legs up and wraps them around her.

“I'm not a climbing frame,” Carol says, nose brushing her ear.

“Climbing frames complain less,” Jess replies. She curls her fingers in the hair at the back of Carol's head, gently scraping her nails over her scalp. Carol tilts her head in to it, eyes closed.

“I take it back. Climb away.”

Carol walks jerkily to the bedroom, stopping twice to kiss Jess again, heavy lidded as Jess runs her fingers through her hair and peppers her face with tiny kisses. By the time they reach the bed, they're both breathing heavily. Carol tries to tip her on to it but Jess keeps her grip and twists, using her body weight to pull Carol down with her. They land facing each other, immediately diving back in to each others mouths, hands reaching for clothes, awkwardly pulling items off without pulling too far away from each other.

Naked, pressed close, legs tangled together, the urgency reduces to a simmer, kisses becoming languid but no less intense. Carol's eyes meet hers, crystal clear and, with the arm not pillowing Jess's head, fingers twined in her hair, Carol trails her fingertips from Jess's collarbone, down her breast, tweaks her nipple. Jess bites her own lip. Pulling her face closer, Carol then nips at the same lip while she plays with the other nipple.

Jess brings her own hand round from the small circles it's been drawing across Carol's rear, slips it between them, brushing over Carol's clit. She breathes in sharply. Jess does it again and Carol gasps in to her mouth. She teases at the soft folds, catching Carol's clit as she goes, slick coating her fingertips. The hand in her hair tightens. Carol's other hand comes down, slides between them, pushes its way between Jess's legs. A finger at a time, Jess presses in to her, warm, welcoming and open, palm resting in the curls. She strokes at the tender walls and Carol's whole body tremors. Carol's fingers slip in to her and, if Carol feels anywhere near as good as she does right now, Jess doesn't ever want it to stop.

They start slow, small movements, drawing gasps from each other, morphing in to something that's almost a competition, pulling louder and stronger noises from each other. Their knuckles clash together like their mouths do, pushing them deeper, closer together. Jess feels it build, a tension being given to her by Carol, between her legs. Normally, her orgasms are like falling over a precipice. This one's more like tumbling down a hill, going on and on, as Carol keeps stroking her. She whimpers her pleasure in to Carol's shoulder. Carol follows quickly, walls fluttering and gasping out.

For a while they just lay there, panting, trying not to nudge anything too sensitive as they exchange gentle touches. Those morph in to soft kisses, leaving Jess feeling loved and safe. After a few minutes, Carol pulls away, smiling down at her indulgently. She leaves Jess alone and the whole room feels empty, colder, but she returns soon enough with a warm towel. Jess uses it to wipe the slick from between her legs and where it's made its way down her thighs. She throws it over the side of the bed then crawls under the covers, feeling the familiar soft cotton against her body.

“Okay?” Carol asks.

Jess doesn't answer, just nods, smiling happily. Her chest feels okay and, even if it didn't, she's not sure she'd care right now.

“Did I hear something about ice cream?” Jess tries.

“There is ice cream.” When she doesn't say anything, Carol says, “You want I should get us some ice cream?”

“Well, I mean, if you're offering.” Jess grins. Carol just rolls her eyes and goes.

Carol returning from the kitchen has to be one of the most beautiful sights Jess has ever seen. Naked, she is divine; tall, curving, muscles rippling just under the skin, golden haired and with full breasts that hang free, a completely different shape to when they're encased in fabric. Naked Carol _carrying ice cream_ is even better. But only just.

She climbs in next to Jess and it's like having her own personal heater in bed with her. Jess snuggles closer luxuriating in the warmth, the afterglow. Carol wraps an arm around her and presses more kisses to her cheek, then hands her a spoon.

“Which do you want first?” Carol asks her. “Fudge brownie or choc chop?”

God could this woman be more perfect? As she digs in to a carton of ice cream, Carol next to her attacking the other, Jess tries not to think about how little time they must have left.

* * *

“I've got something I want to show you,” Carol says to her. She waits for Jess to put down her bowl of cereal on the breakfast island, then hands her her StarkPad.

Jess scrolls through a few pages. It's a document, heavy in unfamiliar scientific terminology interspersed with charts and tables.

“What am I looking at?” she asks, confused.

“My blood work. Beast sent it over.”

Jess's head shoots up, suddenly concerned. The last few weeks together have been almost idyllic but if there's something wrong with Carol, if she's sick again-

“There's nothing-” Carol cuts herself off. Leaning against the counter, she runs a hand through her hair. “Okay. So. You remember I wanted to talk to Stephen? When we were at the tower?”

She nods, unsure where this is going.

“Something Viper said – when you were knocked out – something she said bugged me. I wanted to get his opinion on it.”

There's a lump growing in her throat that has nothing to do with the injuries Hydra inflicted.

“What does that have to do with McCoy sending you blood tests?”

“Viper believed you when you said your powers are faulty.”

“That's just how you dupe someone.” Jess tries to laugh it off but it comes out too tight. “You tell them what they want to hear.”

“She bought it, Jess. She bought it completely.”

“I'm good at what I do!”

“I know you are.” Carol looks like she's choosing her next words carefully. “Jess do you think there's something wrong with your powers?”

“Just the same thing that's always been wrong with them.”

Her words are too light, she knows that when Carol's face falls.

“Viper said that I'd end up hating you.”

Jess doesn't say anything, can't even bring herself to look at Carol as she feels the panic start to bubble. Carol knows. She has to. She must feel it already. Must have felt it back in Madripoor. That's why she went to Stephen. Why she went to Hank. She's got proof now. The panic starts the boil over as her world crumbles.

“What's wrong with your powers?” Carol asks her again.

It's Carol, she can tell her the truth. She owes her that much. Then she can leave Carol alone to get on with her life, without the burden of her around.

“They-” The words catch in her throat, she's never done this before. Never admitted the truth in her own words. “I'm toxic. My control... It's good but it's not as perfect as everyone thinks.”

“What about the perfume?”

Jess shakes her head. “It helps but it doesn't get all of them. I can keep them under check enough that, for the most part, they don't effect anyone. But I can't keep all of them in. I wasn't designed to, to discourage long term attachments. Over time, all those small amounts of pheromones start to add up in the people around me.”

“Did Viper tell you this?” Carol asks, mouth tight.

“She confirmed it but it wasn't anything I didn't already know.”

“So, I'm going to hate you because I'm a woman who's spent a lot of time around you? You didn't think I might want to know this?”

“You really want to do whatever this is knowing there's an expiration date? Because I have been – since we _met –_ and I can tell you it sucks.”

“What I want is the person _living_ with me, the person sleeping in my bed, to be honest with me!”

“Why, so you know when you've got enough of my pheromones in you? So you can spot when you've grown sick of me?”

Carol takes a breath to retort but slams her mouth shut, obviously thinking better of it. She clenches and unclenches her fists then rubs her palms on her thighs.

“Read the conclusion,” Carol says. “At the end of the document, Hank wrote a conclusion. You should read it.”

Jess does. Then she reads it again. And then for a third time.

“I don't understand,” Jess whispers. “This... This is a mistake.”

“Hank McCoy is one of the best biochemists in the world. And our kind of unique is his specialty. That's why Stephen suggested getting him to test my blood – he's been doing it for a few weeks now. Whatever your body was doing should show up in me.” She takes a steadying breath before continuing. “There's nothing there, Jess. You aren't toxic, you aren't giving me pheromones.”

“No, but I am,” she insists. “That's what happens.”

“They aren't there.”

“Maybe...” she reaches for something, starting to feel a little hopeful. “Maybe because you're part alien, you, you burn through them, right?”

“Jess, _I_ may not remember it but you know I'm as susceptible to pheromones as anyone.”

“Did he check your hormones?” She's grasping now. “They interact differently with testosterone and oestrogen. If- if your levels are too similar then, then maybe they canceled each other out?”

“My hormones are fine. Even if they weren't, there should still be something there. That's what Hank's report says. Your control is perfect. You're not dosing me with pheromones.”

The panic rises again. “No, I am.”

“I knew you weren't going to believe me without proof. This is proof. Your powers aren't broken, Jess. They work perfectly.”

“No-” It can't be true. “No, because-” Because that would mean- “All those women.” All those friendships.

Tears prick at the corners of her eyes as the memories of Lindsey, Sabrina, other friends, other lovers, all start to flood her mind. Carol steps towards her but Jess backs away.

“I drove them away? If it wasn't the pheromones, then it was me,” Jess says, voice thick, backing up to the wall. She looks up, terrified. “It was me.”

Carol reaches out towards her and Jess can't do this now, she can't, can't be near her. She climbs straight up the metal of the wall, sprints across the ceiling, flings herself through the tiny opening of the window. Taking deep breaths of cool air, she climbs on to the statue's head. It doesn't help. Even sat outside, her chest feels as tight as it did at Viper's hands.

If it wasn't the pheromones, could they have worked out? Could those friendships have been saved? Was there something she could have done?

High atop the statue, where no one can see her, she lets the tears flow. The memory of that godawful note from Sabrina rises unbidden. Another of the look on Lindsey's face as she asked her to leave follows fast behind. Great, racking sobs overtake her body.

Dimly, she notices the chill as she tucks her knees up to her chest. The tears keep coming and Jess doesn't know how to make them stop. Everything feels wrong. She's always known – always believed – the pheromones fucked up her life. Instead, she's the one who's kept fucking this up. She tries to wipe away the tears with her sleeve but they're quickly replaced by more.

Worst of all, Carol knows now. Carol knows what kind of a fuck up she is and, when she leaves her, it'll be because she ruined it, not because her body betrayed her.

She takes some shuddering breaths, fighting through the last of her sobs. Her eyes hurt, her muscles are sore and she's got that bone deep exhaustion that only comes from crying. She starts to shake, whether from dehydration or the cold that's wrapped itself around her, Jess doesn't know.

As she crawls back in through the window, she sees Carol watching her cautiously. She walks to the sink, pours herself a glass of water and downs it in three quick gulps.

“I'm sorry,” Carol says. “I shouldn't have told you like that.”

Jess doesn't know what to say. She hangs her head and splashes some water on her face. The apartment feels cavernous, empty, filled only with silence. If she doesn't think she'd be sick, Jess would try to drink some more water. She takes some breaths in through her nose to stave off the nausea.

Tucking her hair behind her ear, she crosses to the couch and sinks down in to it, pulling a cushion in to her lap.

“Please say something,” Carol says.

There's a stain on the carpet – probably caused by one of Chewie's hairballs – round, splotchy and discolored. She stares at it so she doesn't have to look anywhere else.

“What do you want to me to say?” Jess replies, tiredly.

“I don't know.” She takes the other end of the couch from Jess, at least a foot between. “Are you okay?”

“Not really.” Her fingers dig in to the cushion's soft fabric as she tugs it tighter. “I feel stupid.”

“You shouldn't.”

“Why not?” Jess croaks. The tears threaten to return but she's not sure she has any left. “I wrecked every good relationship I ever had. And I convinced myself it wasn't my fault.”

“It's not.”

“Don't-”

“Hydra gave you a power set,” Carol insists. “They never gave you the emotional toolkit to deal with those powers. You rationalized something you didn't understand. How can that be your fault?”

“I should have known.”

“You didn't. It's okay that you didn't.”

Jess doesn't reply. They lapse in to silence.

“There's something I want to ask you,” Carol says tentatively. Jess shrugs to acknowledge she's heard her. “What did you do when things soured?”

“There wasn't anything I could do, was there?” She knows she sounds bitter. “It was the pheromones.”

“When we fight, you think you could stick around?”

“Or we could just not fight?” Jess tries.

Carol looks at her incredulously.

“That's not an option. I'm too stubborn, you're too used to hiding things. We're gonna have fights. But I really want us to work. Just- Promise me you'll stick around when things get tough?”

She wants to say yes. She wants to say, she'll stay as long as Carol wants her. But still, somewhere in the back of her mind, is the voice insisting that Carol only _thinks_ she wants her. That, at some point, the pheromones will kick in and it'll all be over. She needs to stop listening to that voice but it's hard. The voice has always been there, will probably always been there, distorting the world around her.

“I can try,” Jess breathes. “But I might need you to be patient with me, I have no idea what I'm doing. Not like it's going to be easy for you either, you're almost never patient.”

“If I need to, I can be terribly patient.”

“No, you can be a terrible patient, those aren't the same things.”

Carol grins and, just like that, Jess feels like it might be alright. She scoots across the space between them. Carol pulls her in to her arms and Jess rests her face in the crook of Carol's neck, breathing in the familiar sent of her.

“Not going anywhere,” Carol promises and presses a kiss to the side of her head.

_Yes, she will_ , says the voice.  _She'll get bored or you'll fuck up and the pheromones will-_

“I know,” says Jess.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic took forever, but I had a blast writing it. It was only meant to be 8-10k, somehow it snowballed to be almost 3 times that. Massive thanks to everybody who cheered me on from the sidelines, sent me lovely anons, and called me a monster for doing horrible things to Jess - you know who you are and I'm very grateful.
> 
> Comments are my favourite thing ever, so please leave them if you feel so inclined.
> 
> My [tumblr](http://beckydawolf.tumblr.com) is where I post about comic books and lesbians.


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